The most valuable company on the planet is set to square off against the FBI on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee in a highly publicized dispute regarding the iPhone that belonged to Syed Farook who, along with his wife, murdered more than a dozen people in December at a San Bernardino county holiday party.
The director of the FBI will appear, as will Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, who will argue that “technology companies should not be able to dictate who can access key evidence in criminal investigations.”
“No device or company, no matter how popular, should be able to exempt itself from court obligations unilaterally,” Vance’s prepared statement reads. “And they should not be able to write their own laws.”
“Building that software tool would not affect just one iPhone; it would weaken the security for all of them,” Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell counters.
“Members of the House Judiciary Committee are considering filing a ‘friend of the court’ brief in Apple’s encryption dispute with the U.S. government to argue that the case should be decided by Congress and not the courts,” Reuters reports. “The filing would argue that the Feb. 16 order from a federal court in California that instructs Apple to write special software to unlock an iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino shooters threatens the constitutional separation of powers.”
Meanwhile, in a related case, a federal magistrate declined to grant the government’s request that Apple pull data from an iPhone in a drug case in New York. As The New York Times notes, it’s “the first time that the government’s legal argument for opening up devices like the iPhone has been put to the test.”
The judge, in a 50-page ruling, targeted the All Writs Act which supports federal reuqests for data extraction. “Judge Orenstein said the government was inflating its authority by using the All Writs Act to force Apple to extract data from an iPhone seized in connection with a drug case,” The Times noted earlier today. “The All Writs Act is also being invoked in the fight over the San Bernardino shooting.”
Below, find the live feed for the hearing as well as a statement from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.).
From the committee: “The widespread use of strong encryption has implications both for Americans’ privacy and security. As technology companies have made great strides to enhance the security of Americans’ personal and private information, law enforcement agencies face new challenges when attempting to access encrypted information. Americans have a right to strong privacy protections and Congress should fully examine the issue to be sure those are in place while finding ways to help law enforcement fight crime and keep us safe.”
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ngZ7SV Tyler Durden