By David K. Shipler
We might be
approaching a tipping point about privacy, as dramatized by the Apple-FBI
dispute over decrypting a terrorist’s iPhone. After years of seeing privacy and
safety as opposites in the war on terrorism, important segments of American
society seem to be recognizing personal security and national security as parts
of the same whole, not as a dichotomy in a zero-sum game. If this evolution
continues, it could eventually produce a significant correction to the
surveillance state that developed after the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001.
In the meantime, however, the two versions
of security are colliding: the government’s rising concern about security from
crime and terrorism in an age of digital encryption on the one hand, and, on
the other, the public’s heightened interest in security from hackers, identity
thieves, cyber-ransom demands, and—yes—government surveillance. Both sets of
anxiety are justified. How to resolve the clash intelligently is far from
clear.
The FBI’s effort to force Apple to
create new software to disable an iPhone’s security features is propelling the
courts forward in time at a faster speed than they typically travel. They usually
lag well behind technology. But now they and Congress need to catch up quickly.
That phone and hundreds of others sit in evidence lockers waiting to be cracked
by law enforcement, requiring a creative effort by judges, legislators,
prosecutors, and high-tech companies to make it possible—legally and
technically—to execute a legitimate search warrant on a particular device
without the risk of compromising security on all such devices.
