As the protectors of the citizen’s of the United States, the FBI felt they were obligated to access the data on Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino terrorists through any means necessary, even by force. They believed that information such as motives or possible accomplices may be hidden on the iPhone 5C and access to that will potentially allow them to capture other perpetrators or perhaps even prevent future terror attacks.
After two months of failing to gain access to the iPhone in question, the FBI appealed to the courts of California and they were successful in gaining an order which demanded that Apple build a backdoor in their software to disable the erase-after-ten-failed-attempts feature (erases all contents of an iPhone after ten …show more content…
I would do so because I understand that if Apple were to comply, they would make all their existing iOS more vulnerable to malicious hacking. It is Apple’s duty to protect their customers, not to make their devices more vulnerable. In addition to the fact that Apple is duty bound to protect all of their customers, a utilitarian argument can be made for this as well and while I am in no way a practicer of utilitarianism, this certainly helps solidify my opinion. Consider the amount of people who at that time owned a device with iOS 9 installed. Every single one of those people would now be in possession of a device that is practically defenseless against malicious attacks. Now think of the sort of harm that can come to someone if they lose control of the device they are so dependant on. If someone is able to gain access to the iOS, they are capable of completely controlling the device and not only can they access the user’s data but they are able to manipulate the operating system (control the battery, touch screen features etc.). This would render the device useless to the owner especially if they are in a potentially dangerous situation which could in fact be orchestrated by the hacker. The amount of people who can be harmed by assisting the FBI far outnumbers the amount of people the FBI hopes to save by gaining access to the
After two months of failing to gain access to the iPhone in question, the FBI appealed to the courts of California and they were successful in gaining an order which demanded that Apple build a backdoor in their software to disable the erase-after-ten-failed-attempts feature (erases all contents of an iPhone after ten …show more content…
I would do so because I understand that if Apple were to comply, they would make all their existing iOS more vulnerable to malicious hacking. It is Apple’s duty to protect their customers, not to make their devices more vulnerable. In addition to the fact that Apple is duty bound to protect all of their customers, a utilitarian argument can be made for this as well and while I am in no way a practicer of utilitarianism, this certainly helps solidify my opinion. Consider the amount of people who at that time owned a device with iOS 9 installed. Every single one of those people would now be in possession of a device that is practically defenseless against malicious attacks. Now think of the sort of harm that can come to someone if they lose control of the device they are so dependant on. If someone is able to gain access to the iOS, they are capable of completely controlling the device and not only can they access the user’s data but they are able to manipulate the operating system (control the battery, touch screen features etc.). This would render the device useless to the owner especially if they are in a potentially dangerous situation which could in fact be orchestrated by the hacker. The amount of people who can be harmed by assisting the FBI far outnumbers the amount of people the FBI hopes to save by gaining access to the