Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response
By NICK WINGFIELD and MIKE ISAAC

After a federal court ordered Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by an attacker in a December mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the company’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, penned a passionate letter warning of far-reaching implications beyond the case.

The response from other technology companies? A mix of carefully calibrated support and crickets.

Late on Wednesday, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, said on Twitter that law enforcement demands to hack customer devices and data “could be a troubling precedent.” Not long afterward, Reform Government Surveillance, a coalition formed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, released a broad statement that did not mention the Apple case or Mr. Cook’s letter but said technology companies should not be required to put “back doors” — the equivalent of a tech entryway — into their products.

It took almost another 24 hours for Facebook and Twitter to weigh in. On Thursday, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, posted that the company stands with Mr. Cook and Apple. Facebook issued a statement that did not mention Apple but said it would “fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems.”

Asked about Apple’s opposition to the court order, representatives of Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment.

The range of reactions highlights the complicated set of factors influencing tech companies’ responses to government demands for customer data in the era after revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, of widespread government surveillance. Some companies may be keeping their heads low to avoid becoming targets during the raucous presidential campaign, while others may fear that being too vocal will jeopardize government sales and relationships with law enforcement, privacy experts said.

“The issue is of monumental importance, not only to the government and Apple but to the other technology giants as well,” said Tom Rubin, a former attorney for Microsoft and the United States Department of Justice, who is now a law lecturer at Harvard University. “Those companies are undoubtedly following the case intently, praying that it creates a good precedent and breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not them in the spotlight.”

Mr. Cook vowed to fight a federal court order that the company help the F.B.I. bypass security measures on the iPhone because he fears complying could seriously weaken privacy protections for Apple’s customers. If the government is successful, lawyers and privacy advocates warn, other tech companies could be approached to provide back doors into their products for law enforcement.

Some Silicon Valley luminaries were more direct in their support of Mr. Cook, including Jan Koum, the chief executive of WhatsApp, the mobile messaging app owned by Facebook. In a message posted to Facebook, Mr. Koum said he admired Mr. Cook’s position on privacy.

“We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set,” Mr. Koum wrote. “Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake.”

But behind the scenes, there was discomfort among some companies that have generally allied themselves with Apple on the topic of government surveillance.

All of the companies involved in Reform Government Surveillance, including Apple, acknowledge that they often comply with law enforcement requests for customer data when under order from a court. Apple’s stance in this case seemed overly antagonistic to some companies in the coalition, according to people privy to conversations on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

In its statement on Wednesday, Reform Government Surveillance chose its words carefully. The association’s member companies, the statement said, “remain committed to providing law enforcement with the help it needs while protecting the security of their customers and their customers’ information.”

There was also disagreement about Apple’s tactics. Gunter Ollmann, chief security officer at Vectra Networks, an information security company in San Jose, Calif., argued that the government’s demand that Apple help unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone was in line with similar one-time requests and that Apple was creating an unnecessarily high-stakes battle by framing the unlocking as creating a universal back door.

“I’m concerned that since Apple has attempted to deny the F.B.I. request citing use of ‘back doors,’ should they lose this legal argument, the repercussions could be extensive to the entire security industry,” he said in a blog post.

If Apple had instead framed the issue as more of a tech-specific matter, “the prospect of a lost appeal would be greatly limited,” rather than “being included in appeals over anti-terrorism and a specific instance of a horrific crime,” Mr. Ollmann added.

Privacy advocates speculated that one reason Apple was willing to stake out a bolder position against what it saw as law enforcement overreach was that it is not as eager for government business as some of its rivals. Amazon has a large deal with the Central Intelligence Agency to help run its cloud computing operations, for example.

On Wednesday, Microsoft promoted a deal with the United States Department of Defense under which the department will standardize its computers on the company’s Windows 10 operating system. Microsoft has also pushed back against the government on issues including a court case in New York involving an effort to get Microsoft customer data stored outside the United States.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group, said some tech companies “are a little bit uneasy doing things on the law enforcement side that might disrupt their ability to win contracts.”

Privacy advocates also said that Apple was taking a stronger position on privacy matters because its business does not hinge on the online collection of large amounts of consumer data, unlike the operations of other tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter. In the past, Mr. Cook has contrasted the privacy policies of Apple, which makes the overwhelming majority of its money by selling devices like the iPhone and Macs, with those of Internet companies that make their money from advertising.

“A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer,” Mr. Cook wrote in a letter on privacy posted on Apple’s site in 2014. “You’re the product.”

Apple’s absolutist position is also seen by many as a reflection of Mr. Cook’s view that privacy is a human right.

“They’re deeply a consumer company,” said Ryan Calo, an assistant law professor at the University of Washington. “They’re less reliant on information as a business model. They sell things. I really think their C.E.O. has religion on privacy and personality matters.”

蘋果鬥政府 美科技界陷兩難

蘋果公司不顧美國聯邦法院的命令，拒絕協助聯邦調查局把去年十二月加州聖伯納地諾郡槍擊案凶嫌的iPhone解鎖，紐約時報報導，美國其他科技業者對此事反應審慎，紛紛以不得罪政府的方式聲援蘋果，以免失去政府合約。

十七日晚間，谷歌執行長皮伽在推特上發文說，執法單位要求入侵客戶的裝置並取得資料「可能會創下令人不安的先例」。不久後，蘋果、谷歌、微軟和臉書等十家科技公司合組的「改革政府監控聯盟」發布聲明表示科技公司不應被要求為旗下產品「開後門」，但並未指明係針對蘋果這個案例。

又過了幾乎整整一天，臉書和推特才想好如何回應。推特執行長杜錫十八日發文說，推特支持蘋果及其執行長庫克的立場。臉書發布的聲明並未提到蘋果，只說臉書將「大力對抗迫使企業削弱其系統安全性的要求」。微軟和亞馬遜的代表被問到蘋果案例時都拒絕回應。

隱私權專家指出，有些科技公司盡量保持低調以免被總統參選人攻擊；有的公司則害怕得罪當局，拿不到政府合約。

曾擔任微軟與美國司法部律師、現為哈佛大學法律系講師的魯賓說：「蘋果這個案例不只對政府和蘋果非常重要，對其他知名科技公司也意義重大，那些公司當然都緊盯這個案子，祈禱最後能開創好的先例，並暗自慶幸主角不是自己。」

「改革政府監控聯盟」所有成員公司（包括蘋果）都承認，常在法院命令下應執法單位的要求交出客戶資料。消息人士透露，聯盟內一些公司認為，蘋果在這個案子上似乎太過與政府為敵。

提倡隱私權人士猜測，蘋果敢反抗政府是因為較不依賴政府合約。亞馬遜負責幫中央情報局處理雲端運算業務，微軟則剛在十七日與美國國防部談成一筆生意，部內所有電腦一律採用微軟Windows 10作業系統。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/tech-reactions-on-apple-highlight-issues-with-government-requests.html

Video：Is Apple Right in Defying the FBI?
Apple has said it will not comply with a federal court order to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers. Commenters online weigh privacy versus security in an age of terrorism.
http://nyti.ms/1RbkSyf

2016-02-20．聯合報．A15．國際．編譯李京倫