In the ongoing controversy over Apple’s refusal to unlock the San Bernardino suspect’s iPhone on behalf of FBI, today Apple’s General Counsel Bruce Sewell will appear before the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled “The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy,” as will FBI Director James Comey.
A live stream of the hearing (embedded below) will begin today at 9:30AM PT/12:30PM ET.
Yesterday we shared Sewell’s prepared statements for the hearing in which he echoed past statements from the company and said the FBI’s demands for a backdoor into iOS “would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens.”
We have the utmost respect for law enforcement and share their goal of creating a safer world. We have a team of dedicated professionals that are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to assist law enforcement. When the FBI came to us in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, we gave all the information we had related to their investigation. And we went beyond that by making Apple engineers available to advise them on a number of additional investigative options.
But we now find ourselves at the center of an extraordinary circumstance. The FBI has asked a Court to order us to give them something we don’t have. To create an operating system that does not exist — because it would be too dangerous.
A press release from the House Judiciary Committee said the goal of the hearing today will be to examine “encryption and the questions it raises for Americans and lawmakers,” and that the committee’s goal is to “find a solution that allows law enforcement to effectively enforce the law without harming the competitiveness of U.S. encryption providers or the privacy protections of U.S. citizens.”
“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.
And ahead of today’s hearing, earlier today a report said the House Judiciary Committee members may file legal brief to back Apple’s view that Congress should decide the FBI case. That mirrors a statement from Apple lawyer Ted Boutrous yesterday where he called the situation a broad “political and policy question,” saying it should be dealt with by Congress and not in the courts.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GgnbN9oNw]
Check back at 9:30AM PT/12:30PM ET for the live stream of the hearing today.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Holy hell! It’s Chris Farley on the left!
Actually that’s Peter “Griffin” Oppenheimer Apple’s former CFO but we’re just splitting hairs here
There are three sides/views to this argument.
1. Apple’s.
2. Liars and cheats breaking the law
3. Morons who don’t know better
I always thought that hacking into someone else’s computer without permission is a cybercrime. So, it sounds like the FBI wants Apple to do something that would normally be thought of as illegal.
it is illegal, because forced reading of one’s personal conversations etc is equivalent of forcing an admission in an interview. A person has the right to say nothing and to force the law agencies to gather their own evidence, and the same should technically apply for giving access to a device. A living person has the right to refuse to unlock a computer or device if doing so would hurt their defence, so how is it any different because the suspect is dead, the suspect who is already known to be guilty regardless.
This case serves absolutely no purpose, and the FBI are aware of this. The only thing the FBI is hoping to achieve is to enable their job to be made illegally easier so they can sit on their fat donut eating asses more and spend less time out in the field, doing the job that tax payers pay them for. That and to strengthen the abilities of the FBI, DoJ and other agencies involved in PRISM in spying on innocent people or people who cannot be justifiably called a suspect in the courts.
If Apple had any sense, they’d have agreed to help, and “accidentally” destroyed the storage chip while trying to recover the data. Destruction of the chip is the most likely outcome in the only solution that the founder of McAfee could offer – in a process where the chip is cut open to “try” to recover the data.
This is coming up live on C-SPAN3 as well at 1pm EDT
It doesn’t seem to be working, the live stream.
Chaffetz discussing stingrays…..
Darrell Issa’s ideas are quite simple to understand and completely make sense. FBI should jump on it and try it out! No need for Apple to do anything at all.
Why are these politicians making such a big stink over their Alma Mater? I find it hilarious as they continually try to make us think they went to prestigious colleges.
Most of these guys are just stupid idiots! They don’t understand anything.
I hope somebody will hack the FBI, the CIA and so on. Maybe these people will see what a backdoor or a bad code can do.
Maybe somebody of these guys have to ask them self if it’s ok for the security of USA if everybody can own weapons at home. I’m sure they wouldn’t have this problem. It’s kinda “funny” that the FBI, will make Apple and his encryption responsible for their problem.
that Goodlatte guy is an absolute dumbass
Is there a Chinese translation on the background like Apple events… =)
It was said best by Ms Lofgren at the start of the stream – there are dozens of fully encrypted messenger services out there, most of which are developed outside of the USA’s jurisdiction of investigation. This case serves no purpose. Weaken the encryption of iMessage and iPhone in general, more of these apps will appear and people will switch to them, and the FBI will have gotten nowhere, other than wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer’s money to force an irrelevant court order which was always doomed to failure.
Exactly!
As long as people are free to write code they will create systems that provide encryption. This is impossible to prevent – therefore all criminals will always have easy access to encryption.
except iCloud is encrypted….