Justice Department Calls Apple’s Refusal to Unlock iPhone a ‘Marketing Strategy’

Eric Lichtblau, reporting for the NYT:

The Justice Department, impatient over its inability to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino killers, demanded Friday that a judge immediately order Apple to give it the technical tools to get inside the phone.

It said that Apple’s refusal to help unlock the phone for the F.B.I. “appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” rather than a legal rationale.

As though providing genuine security to users is not meaningful, valuable, and genuinely important.

From the government’s filing:

Apple has attempted to design and market its products to allow technology, rather than the law, to control access to data which has been found by this Court to be warranted for an important investigation.

As Ashkan Soltani noted:

DoJ’s updated motion essentially attempts to describe encryption as an illegal technology.

★ Friday, 19 February 2016