Week ahead: Apple, FBI build their case in encryption fight

A groundswell of support from high-profile tech companies is boosting Apple’s effort to rebuff a federal court order demanding it help unlock the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

Seventeen companies, including Twitter, Airbnb and LinkedIn, filed a brief Thursday in support of Apple in its court battle with the FBI over whether it should be required to help the agency access the phone.

Earlier in the week, the company scored a victory when a U.S. magistrate judge ruled in Apple’s favor in a similar case involving the phone of a convicted drug trafficker in New York.

{mosads}But law enforcement is pressing its case that access to Farook’s phone is critical in the ongoing investigation into the December shooting, which killed 14.

The San Bernardino district attorney on Thursday argued that investigators must be able to access the locked iPhone because it could contain a dormant cyber weapon that “poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County.”

“The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network,” said Michael Ramos, San Bernardino County district attorney, in the filing. “The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino’s infrastructure.”

Security researchers were quick to discredit the claim, which some characterized as “fear-mongering.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in an oversight hearing examining the Justice Department, a week after she briefly touched on the ongoing dispute.

Lynch, who has been much less outspoken on the issue than FBI Director James Comey, on Tuesday called for “open dialogue” between technology firms and law enforcement.

“That’s how we move closer to our shared goal of ensuring that as the American people reap the benefits of innovation, they continue to enjoy the full protection of the law,” Lynch told an audience at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

The feud between the FBI and Apple has largely been seen as a proxy for the larger debate over the degree of access law enforcement agencies should have into encrypted devices.

“As recent events have made clear, the stakes aren’t theoretical; they bear directly upon our public safety and our national security,” Lynch said.

Lawmakers continue to wrangle over how — and if — Congress should tackle the question of regulating encryption.

A proposal from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) establishing a national commission to study the topic is gaining momentum.

The measure received support from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who on Wednesday told The Hill that he plans to back the bill.

Other lawmakers have approached the Apple-FBI dispute directly. Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) this week introduced legislation to prohibit federal agencies from purchasing Apple merchandise until the company gives the FBI access to the encrypted device.

“Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil,” Jolly said in a Thursday statement.

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