In the US the FBI and Apple are locked in a legal battle over unlocking an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farooq an accused in the San Bernardino killings. Anyone seeking to
break the code can make 10 tries after which the phone will self-erase all data. The FBI has obtained a court order which directs Apple to provide reasonable assistance to the FBI to crack the code. Apple has refused and has threatened to fight the FBI all the way to the Supreme Court because what the FBI is asking it to do is create a master key which could be used to open any iPhone. And there are lots of phones that the FBI
would love to open.
Creating this key would destroy the trust levels that iPhone buyers have with the company and open doors for other government to put pressure on Apple to render similar services. On one side is the possibility that the phone could hold clues to other terrorist cells and on the other is the privacy of iPhone users. The US seems to be divided on the issue, but since there
is more at stake here it is likely that this dispute is not going to
end any time soon and certainly not without a fight.
