The US Department of Justice has dropped the lawsuit against Tech Giant, Apple after FBI using an undisclosed third party, unlocked Farook’s iPhone 5c, one of the shooters involved in the San Bernardino shooting in December 2015 that left 14 people dead. In February, FBI filed a request under the All Writs Act to have Apple unlock the iPhone to aid their investigation, a request that Apple turned down. However, the All Writs Act doesn’t work if there’s an alternative solution and so without justification that only Apple could unlock this iPhone, there’s no case.
US Department of Justice spokeswoman said in a statement, “The FBI has now successfully retrieved the data stored on the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple required by this Court Order.”
Amidst controversy and sentiments analysis of whose win this really was, the Tech communities seem to be uploading Apple upon a “victory” over intimidation by government agencies around the world but the question still remains, Who else could possibly fight this uphill battle elsewhere? Your guess is as good as ours.
Apple had this to say about a case they believe should never have been brought at all, “Apple believes deeply that people in the United States and around the world deserve data protection, security and privacy. Sacrificing one for the other only puts people and countries at greater risk.” However, the FBI being able to bypass the security encryption of the iPhone without Apple’s leaves us all wondering is the iPhone’s security features are as advanced as we would all like to think.
This could be the beginning of an even bigger war on data protection, civil liberties and perhaps not a final victory for the FBI or any other country that is looking to curtail internet freedoms and related topics.
