This is not an Android vs. Apple thing. It's not an FBI vs. Apple thing either. It's bigger than that, and will have lingering effects on each and every person using technology for the foreseeable future. I stand with Apple, but more importantly I stand for privacy — mine, yours, everybody's.
I'm here, writing on iMore, because I care as much about the recent iPhone encryption lawsuit — and it's outcome — at least as much as everyone else here.
And I'm here to ask something of you. A pdf file of Apple's motion to vacate in the USG v Apple case in full has been posted online. Read it. I'm not a lawyer, but I see a lot of very important issues here that need addressed. Apple says it better than I ever could:
This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its users' most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance. The All Writs Act, first enacted in 1789 and on which the government bases its entire case, "does not give the district court a roving commission" to conscript and commandeer Apple in this manner. Plum Creek Lumber Co. v. Hutton, 608 F.2d 1283, 1289 (9th Cir. 1979). In fact, no court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the Constitution forbids it.
We're part of the hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. I'm glad Apple is standing up for us all.
Read the Apple motion to vacate (.pdf file)
