La American Civil Liberties Union, Better known as the ACLU, has filled in writing in which expresses its support for Apple in the pulse they currently have with the US Government. The organization claims that the software the FBI requires the Cupertino company to create to allow investigators to bypass the included security features represents an overreach of authority that will leave hundreds of millions of users exposed to security attacks.
The ACLU is the latest organization to speak out on the security and privacy debate, and it has done so by supporting Apple, thus joining Google, Microsoft (not so to Bill Gates), former presidential candidate Ron Paul, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But there are also people who think that Tim Cook and company would have to give in, the most prominent being one of the favorite candidates for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, who even called for a boycott against Apple (something he did from his mobile ).
ACLU believes the government is overreaching
This case is not about a single phone, it is about the government's authority to turn tech companies against their users. The security and privacy of millions of Americans depend on the trust we place in the companies that make our devices. If the government succeeds in forcing companies to exploit the trust of their users, it will have set back digital security and privacy by several decades.
The ACLU brief focuses on four points of the request that the United States Government has made to defend the use of the All Writes Act with the intention of forcing Apple to create special software:
- Apple does not own or control the information requested by the government, it is enough that it was taken out of the box for them to refuse to cooperate.
- Creating the software that the government wants Apple to create is "excessively burdensome" for the company.
- The researchers have not shown that the information they would find is necessary.
- The laws specifically prohibit what the government is doing.
It is clear that this story still has many episodes left, but Apple has already won its first battle in New York. Hopefully Tim Cook and company continue to win future battles and war, for our data and privacy.