Search Tips
1 shown of 1 entities
First report: Important developments and substantive issues, March-July 2016 2016, para. 19
- Paragraph text
- The year 2016 has seen the return of a debate on the value of encryption of personal data stored on or generated by mobile devices. Arguably most prominently, the events relating to a smartphone used by a person who committed a terrible attack in San Bernardino, United States, and the following attempts of United States authorities to gain access to personal data stored on the device manufactured by Apple Inc. have caught public attention. On 2 December 2015, a husband and wife opened fire on a local government office in southern California. As a result, 14 people were killed and more than 20 people seriously injured. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was interested in information that had been stored on the device and synched with Apple's cloud computing service (iCloud). While it was possible to retrieve the data stored externally until 19 October 2015 (when the backups stopped), the data that was stored locally on the smartphone was not easily accessible to the FBI or to Apple. The FBI tried to use the legal framework to create an obligation by Apple to change the software on the smartphone in order to make it less resilient in the case of a hacking attack. When Apple refused to accede to the demand, the FBI took the case to court and applied pressure on the company. Ultimately, on 28 March 2016, the FBI dropped its court fight against Apple because it became possible to gain access to the information stored on the smartphone by other means. "From the beginning, we objected to the FBI's demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government's dismissal, neither of these occurred," Apple said in a statement following the dropping of the case. The Special Rapporteur has, in paragraph 30 of his report of 9 March 2016, outlined his position that permitting or mandating back doors to encryption is a bad idea for many reasons, best summarized in a position paper of the Government of the Netherlands of 4 January 2016. The Apple case has done nothing to change his mind about that aspect of the matter. Smartphones and other mobile devices do, however, raise other fundamental rights issues which may have an impact on privacy and which may possibly need to be decided before the next phase of the "conversation" about encryption can take place or move forward effectively. One such right is the right to silence.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Families
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
1 shown of 1 entities