Just recently, the world had received news involving the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s six week-long legal battle against Apple concerning the ‘cracking’ of Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone, which is a known terrorist and one of the two San Bernardino gunmen.
We can just say that it’s a Government right to do anything in order to protect its citizens, just like the FBI ordering Apple to make a backdoor in their OS in order to crack Farook’s iPhone without destroying its data. However, if Apple tries to comply with the order, that means they are going to violate the existing Fourth Amendment, aside from the fact that they will potentially lose lots of customers along the way. This somehow leaves us to ask this multi-million dollar question: Can the Government really hack your iPhone?
Does the Government Have the Ability to Hack your iPhone?
The truth is, the reason behind the U.S. Government asking Apple for help in cracking Farook’s iPhone is because they can’t do it. Since Farook’s iPhone is protected by the iPhone’s passcode feature, the FBI can’t crack his iPhone without attempting to hack it. Needless to say, just like Farook, every iPhone user can be sure that whatever they store inside their iPhone will be safe. What’s more convenient with that security is that once you failed to put the correct passcode ten times, all of the iPhone’s stored data will be deleted for life. And since Farook had used this security feature in order to protect his iPhone from eavesdropping, the FBI was left no choice but to try persuading Apple to do the cracking job for them. However, since Apple didn’t comply with what they want, it actually resulted in a legal battle, which had lasted for six long weeks.
Even though we all know for now that the FBI had decided to ask assistance from other companies regarding the cracking of Farook’s iPhone, we are all assured about Apple’s credibility in making our personal privacy their main priority. As we all know, more and more people are now using iPhones nowadays because of the features, especially the security that it offers to us. However, if in case that the company complies with the U.S. Government or any other governments to hack and crack any of their products in the near future, that will definitely compromise their goodwill towards all of their customers, along with our much-needed personal privacy.