Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, has manifested his fear for the United States Government to force your company to secretly add surveillance technology in their devices if they win the case that they currently have open with the Cupertino company and in which they ask to be able to unlock the iPhone 5c of one of the San Bernardino snipers. Cue made his remarks in an interview on the Spanish-speaking American television network Univision.
In the interview, Eddy Cue repeated again what his company has been saying in recent weeks, but brought up more troubling details with particular emphasis on the risk of precedent that this step would create. Cue said that the precedent would exist, but it might not be just having to unlock more and more devices in the future, but they could be asked to create a back door that would allow them to have full control of our devices.
Eddy Cue is worried about being spied on
When they get us to create a new system for doing things, where will it stop? For example, one day the FBI might open the phone's camera, the microphone. Those are things we cannot do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think it's very bad. It should not happen in this country.
Apple's Senior Vice President also compared what the FBI asks to give him the key to the back door of our house:
What they want is for us to give them the key to the back door of your house, and we don't have that key. If we don't have the key, they want us to change the lock. When we change it, we change it for everyone. And we will have a key that opens all the phones. That key, once it exists, does not exist only for us. Terrorists, criminals, pirates, all of them will also find that key to open all the phones.
On the other hand, Cue says the FBI is out of the loop compared to other government agencies and mentions the NSA Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, who wants the encryption keep getting more and more secure because he knows that if we create some way to get in, criminals and terrorists will get in. He also said that we do not have to see this case as Apple against the US government, but as an example of Apple's attempts to maintain public safety from criminals and other dangerous agents (what was he going to say about the company he represents? ?):
They are Apple's engineers against terrorists, against criminals. Those are the people we want to protect people from. We are not avoiding the government. We want to help you. They have a very difficult job, they are there to protect us. That is why we want to help you as much as we can, but we cannot help you in a way that will help more criminal terrorists and pirates.
It is clear that, of everything that Eddy Cue says, the most worrying thing is something we have already talked about: that someone can get full control of our device. One of the reasons for not doing the jailbreak (and, beware, this is not a criticism) is precisely to make it difficult for a malicious user get full control of our device. If someone has the key to enter our iPhone or any other device in this way, it is not unreasonable that they can access the camera or microphone and know what we do at all times. Surely you know someone who covers the cameras of their computers for fear of being spied on, right? Well, we would have to do the same on our smartphone. They can also access the GPS and know where we are. Yes, the law enforcement is there to protect us, but does that mean I have to shower in front of them or may I want to keep part of my life private?
You can read the entire interview on the website of Univision