MARTIN LUTHER pinned his treatise to a church door. Tim Cook posted his on Apple’s website. On February 16th Mr Cook published a harsh critique of the government, which has clashed with his firm repeatedly over providing information on suspected criminals—most recently in the case of Syed Rizwan Farook, who, with his wife, murdered 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino last year. This week a federal court sided with the FBI, which had requested Apple’s help in accessing the contents of Mr Farook’s iPhone, and ordered the tech firm to comply. Mr Cook says the “chilling” situation represents “overreach by the US government” that calls for a “public discussion”.
A debate started immediately, with Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, asking why Apple should consider itself above the law. It is a sentiment others may share, but Apple has legitimate reasons for not wanting to comply with the court’s order. The court is trying to force Apple to create a way to deactivate the password-protection feature (which erases the device’s contents after ten failed attempts at guessing the password) on this one iPhone. However, Mr Cook warns that designing this tool, even for one particular case, could put other users at risk, because the federal government would always have the key and could use it in future instances. Other governments will watch the outcome of the case, and might compel Apple to build them a similar tool.
This is not the first time that Mr Cook and American law enforcers have clashed, but the case may become “the epicentre of the debate over privacy and encryption,” says Alan Cohn, a lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson who previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security. Past requests for data have focused on lower-level criminals; Mr Farook is being investigated for terrorism, which heightens the urgency of the government’s request.
Mr Cook has cast himself as a reformer on the side of justice. Might he be held in contempt of court and go to jail? It seems unlikely in the near term, especially since Apple will probably appeal against the ruling. But putting Mr Cook or another Apple executive behind bars for a few days would be no bad thing for the firm’s image. It has gone to great lengths to persuade its users that it respects their privacy and is doing what it can to protect them. So have other tech firms, such as Microsoft, which are fighting lawsuits demanding that they turn over customer data. In its stand-off with the government Apple and other tech firms have a lot to prove, as well as much to lose.