Apple’s top lawyer faces off with FBI chief at House hearing on encryption

rt.com

FBI Director James Comey and Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell testified at the first congressional hearing since their legal battle began. Apple has resisted the FBI’s efforts to force them to open a terrorist’s iPhone.

On Tuesday, the FBI and Apple spoke at a House Judiciary Committee hearing entitled "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy."

The FBI has filed a court order compelling the tech giant to create a special iPhone operating system with intentionally weakened security features to unlock the phones used by one perpetrators of the San Bernardino massacre, which left 14 people dead in December.

Sewell will argue that creating such software would undermine the security and privacy of all iPhones used by Apple’s customers, according to a written testimony posted before the hearing.

"Hundreds of millions of law-abiding people trust Apple’s products with the most intimate details of their daily lives – photos, private conversations, health data, financial accounts, and information about the user's location as well as the location of their friends and families," Sewell wrote in his testimony. "There's probably more information stored on that iPhone than a thief could steal by breaking into your house. The only way we know to protect that data is through strong encryption."

In other words, Apple says that the FBI would force them to create a backdoor that could put the privacy and security of hundreds of millions of iPhone users around the world should the custom software fall into the wrong hands. Devices could become vulnerable to cyber criminals, hackers and government surveillance, the company warned.