Lynch: FBI doesn’t want to turn on iPhone cameras

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday insisted the government is not looking to gain remote spying powers in its standoff with Apple.

The tech giant is defying a court order directing it to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

{mosads}”First of all, we are not asking for a backdoor, nor are we asking him to turn anything on to spy on anyone,” Lynch said on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

Lych was responding to a top Apple executive who recently claimed complying with the court order would eventually give the FBI power to force Apple to turn on users’ cameras and microphones and spy on them.

“Someday they will want [Apple] to turn on [a user’s] camera or microphone,” Apple senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue said to Univision. “We can’t do that now, but what if we’re forced to do that?”

“Where will this stop? In a divorce case? In an immigration case? In a tax case? Some day, someone will be able to turn on a phone’s microphone,” he continued. “That should not happen in this country.”

The back-and-forth is the latest disagreement in the heated debate between the government and Apple.

Apple has argued the FBI wants the company to create software that amounts to a “backdoor” that would give hackers access to all iPhones and damage people’s right to privacy. The FBI has said it needs to turn over every stone in the high-profule terrorist case and that its request does not apply broadly to other locked iPhones.

The two sides have traded barbs in court filings and public statements.

“We’ve disagreed publicly in court, and I have had a number of great conversations with [Apple CEO] Tim Cook on issues of privacy,” Lynch told Colbert.

“What I will say about this is, I understand why this is important to everybody because privacy is an important issue for everyone,” she added. “It’s important to me as the attorney general. It’s important to me as a citizen.”

But, Lynch insisted, the San Bernardino case is simply about accessing one phone, not expanding law enforcement’s authority.

“We’re asking them to do what their customer wants,” she said, referencing the fact that the phone is owned by San Bernardino county, which employed the shooter, Syed Farook.

The request, she added, is “very narrow and it’s very focused.”