Apple Attorney Defends Company's Battle With the Feds
As the encryption battle between Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the FBI continues, the tech giant is maintaining its position that it should not have to legally unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers.
Ted Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general who is currently representing Apple, said if Apple unlocks the iPhone in question, it won’t be a one-and-done deal.
“It is not one phone, it is not one situation,” he told FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. “We have already received indications in courts in various, different parts of the United States from the federal government that they want to use the same technique and the same legal authority--although we think their legal authority is quite weak-- in other cases, not just terrorism cases, but criminal cases, drug cases, other cases like that. Furthermore, the district attorney in New York has stated repeatedly that he has 175 cell phones he wants to do the same thing to in other cases to achieve access.”
Olson added: “There is no way to stop it when the genie is out of the bottle. We’re not just talking about the federal government. We’re talking about state and local governments that have law enforcement desires to get into cell phones whenever they think there’s a crime or evidence of a crime.”
The attorney also argued the Constitution must be followed in this particular case.
“We do have a Constitution in this county and we do have civil rights built into the Constitution,” Olson said. “The framers of our Constitution quite seriously wanted the American people liberty, privacy protected by the Constitution. It’s awful when someone will say that someone should be ashamed for standing up for the rights that are embedded in the Constitution.”
Olson, whose wife was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it was hijacked and flown by terrorists into the Pentagon on 9/11, said this particular privacy issue related to the San Bernardino attack specifically, and should not change anything.
“The terrorists want us to lose those rights [of the Constitution],” he said. “They want us to change our system and have it be a different system where we’re not protected in that way. When Apple stands up for the constitutional rights of itself and people who have trusted it by buying iPhones that have encryption systems embedded in them, Apple is doing something that may be courageous. But, we have to bear in mind that the system that America has given to us is so valuable we must protect it.”