A top Apple lawyer and the FBI ’s top technical school functionary agreed Tuesday that cooperation between police force enforcement agencies and the technical school giant could avoid base - offs over how to access inscribe information as well as the need for police enforcement to hire its own hackers to decrypt information of malefactor and terrorists .
But they take issue on what the cooperation would search like .
Bruce Sewell , Apple ’s general counselor-at-law , tell a House commercialism oversight subcommittee that the company already works with law enforcement on a regular basis and would help produce the FBI ’s capability to decrypt technology itself , but wo n’t spread “ back doors ” to its iPhones due to the security risk that would pose to all user . The FBI had take that Apple write a fresh version of its iOS operating scheme to give admission to the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook .
The FBI finally paid third - party “ gray hat ” hackers in February to decrypt Farook ’s iPhone . Sewell criticise the move as increase exposure of innocent substance abuser .
But Amy Hess , the FBI ’s skill and technology chief , said the authority currently does not have the technology potentiality to access devices on its own , and is n’t likely to have it in the future .
Hess sound out construct the capacity to break encoding on its own would take “ a lot of highly skilled , specialised imagination not useable to us ” and that the federal government will call for cooperation from the technology industry to grow those resources .
What the FBI wants , Hess said , is “ that when we present an order , signed by an independent federal judge , that ( tech companies ) abide by with that order and provide us with the selective information in decipherable signifier . ” How they do that is up to them , she enounce , saying the FBI has moved away from demand for a government back door based on Apple ’s pressure that it is unworkable . “ I do n’t remember the FBI , or law enforcement in general , should be in the business sector of dictating to company what those solutions should be , ” Hess told the subcommittee .
Working together
Both Hess and Sewell said the relationship between technical school company and law enforcement is , and should be , less adversarial than it look like from the exterior .
Sewell said the perception is “ Apple vs. the FBI , ” but in fact both want to balance protecting privacy while captivate criminals who would use encoding to hide .
The remainder , he said , is “ the fundamental disconnection ” in how they see the growth of technology in society . Law enforcement experience things “ going dark , ” or losing data , he say , while applied scientist “ see a data - copious world that seems to be full of selective information . data that law enforcement can use to solve — and prevent — criminal offense . ”
As an representative , he referenced photo DNA , where selective information embed in photograph files helps pass over those files across the net . Sewell said Apple has used this to help the FBI solve abductions , act of terrorism , and child pornography distribution , concern raised by members of the police force enforcement panel .
Sewell also addressed a rumour refer by another witness , Indiana State Police applied science expert Charles Cohen , who noted Chinese news agency reports have hint that Apple had given root code for the Io to the Taiwanese government while refusing to work with the FBI .
“ We have not provided source code to the Chinese government , ” Sewell told the committee . When Rep. Tim Murphy , R - Pa. , the subcommittee chairman , pressed the yield , Sewell state him , “ We have been asked by the Chinese government , and we refused . ”
