The iPhone at hand belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, the couple who took 14 lives in an attack in December 2015. But the open letter to Apple customers posted on Apple’s website is significant in that it does not just respond to this court order and incident, specifically, but to the importance of encryption at large.
Cook’s referring to Apple’s default encryption, first implemented with iOS 8, which ensures that a third-party has no way to access your files. They are protected by an encryption key tied to your password. That Apple is just as blind to your photos and texts as the FBI also helps explain the unique nature of the court request. Rather than impel Apple to unlock the phone, the FBI wants Apple to help it develop a way to bruteforce the password without triggering a mechanism that deletes the key that decrypts the data. Currently, 10 wrong password tries will make the iPhone’s data inaccessible forever. The FBI would like to lift that restriction, along with the mandatory delays between password attempts that will slow their progress considerably.
Given the high profile of both Apple and the case involved, these proceedings seem likely to be many Americans’ first real introduction to the encryption fight that has loomed for some time.
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