NYPD Admits the Battle Over Apple Will Set a Crucial Precedent

Apple is still fighting with the government over whether it should create a special software to help the DOJ unlock an iPhone connected to the suspect in the San Bernardino shooting. But government officials and Apple execs agree about one key point: It’s not about one phone. This is about the future of security.

In an op-ed for the New York Times today, New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton and NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Deputy Commissioner James J. Miller admitted that what Apple has been asked to do will drive how the government demands tech companies provide access to secured devices in the future.

“The ramifications of this fight extend beyond San Bernardino,” Bratton and Miller write. The NYPD bosses say that the government’s demand boils down to restoring “a key that was available until 2014.” This is a reference to the change Apple made in 2014, when it upgraded its encryption.

While it’s easy to imagine that most government officials wish that they could time travel and convince Apple not to upgrade its security, or that Apple could somehow remotely downgrade all of its phones to iOS 7 and other software versions with weaker encryption, that’s a misrepresentation of what the DOJ is asking. It is asking that Apple create a software to work around security measures in place to protect encrypted data—and it is asking this in order to set a precedent for cooperation, not just for this one wild and rare incident.

http://gizmodo.com/nypd-chief-admits-the-battle-over-apple-will-set-a-cruc-1760775671