Across The Abyss

Remember the terror attack in Pensacola, FL, about a year ago? I don’t, not really, but this recent CNN report that the FBI managed to break the encryption scheme used by Apple for security made me consider the entire controversy in a bit of a new light.

The Saudi military trainee who killed three US sailors and wounded several others in a terror attack last year on a military base in Pensacola, Florida, was a longtime associate of al Qaeda who had communicated with operatives from the group as recently as the night before the shooting, the Justice Department and the FBI announced Monday.

US investigators uncovered the al Qaeda connection after the FBI broke through the encryption protecting the Saudi attacker’s iPhones and have been able to use the information on the devices to carry out a recent counterterrorism operation in Yemen, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a news conference.

“The evidence we’ve been able to develop from the killer’s devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation by a longtime AQAP associate,” Wray said, referring to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest branches of the terror group. …

The officials also used the opportunity to hammer Apple for refusing to help investigators break into the devices.

Wray said that the FBI received “effectively no help” from Apple in bypassing the phones and that third-party technology firms were also unable to help investigators. …

Barr called it a “great disappointment” that Apple had refused to help investigators.

“Apple has made a business and marketing decision to design its phones in a way that only the user can unlock the contents no matter what the circumstances. In cases like this, where the user is a terrorist, or in other cases where the user is a violent criminal, a human trafficker, a child predator, Apple’s decision has dangerous consequences for the public safety and the national security and is in my judgment unacceptable,” Barr said. …

Apple said in a statement Monday that the company doesn’t believe in creating special access to its devices for the government because of security concerns.

“It is because we take our responsibility to national security so seriously that we do not believe in the creation of a backdoor — one which will make every device vulnerable to bad actors who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers,” the company said.

“There is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys, and the American people do not have to choose between weakening encryption and effective investigations.”

In essence, Apple and its unnamed ally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have taken an absolutist position reminiscent of the armed protesters who have sallied forth in response to the various Stay At Home orders issued in most states. In each case, they have embraced a position with little regard for those on the other side of the issue, attempting to claim that their position is an ideal, rather than acknowledging that, well, an absolute right will typically impact someone else in a negative way. They share the same anti-government sentiments as well, if in varying strengths, which is beginning to feel increasingly like a dated position to hold. I find myself wondering more and more these days how much public paranoiac positions like these are organic, how many are self-inflicted wounds from incompetent or corrupt behaviors by government employees, and how many of them are the results of careful psychological warfare by our national adversaries.

I do understand the concerns of private individuals about the government monitoring their communications, although I also think, based on the British experience with cameras monitors, that monitoring the volume of communications we see today would be close to overwhelming, even with “AI” support, and so for the common citizen the threat is trivial. I also understand that adding back doors or some other approach for breaking encryption lawfully means there’s an opportunity for unlawful intrusion by malefactors.

But I’d like to make these points.

1. The FBI just broke the encryption. Sure, Director Wray says it was basically a one-off – maybe they got lucky guessing a prime number or pulled off some fancy hardware trick beyond my comprehension, specific to the device. But they figured it out. If they did it once, they now have a strategy for doing it again. The Apple claims rings somewhat hollow.
2. It’s not as if this is all new. Phones have been “tapped” for decades – a lot of decades. Communications monitoring is nothing new. Notebooks have been seized and, when necessary, codes broken and deciphered. A smartphone, which is a highly sophisticated mating of a phone with a smart notebook, being seized and read is, again, nothing new – this has been going on for centuries. For all the screaming about government monitoring and intrusion, we’ve been coping with government having these abilities for a long time, now. We have laws and punishments for illegal governmental tapping. Is there some reason to think we can’t cope with taps on our smartphones?

I know the absolutists claim the government doesn’t “need” this capability, but I do have to wonder. Taking a year to break the encryption on an iPhone cannot, in any universe, be considered “timely,” and I think we’re simply fortunate that nothing of note has happened since that might have been prevented by breaking that encryption sooner.

Perhaps I’m just cranky tonight, but the absolutist position is beginning to feel less principled and more … petulant.