So we all know what happened: terrorist attack, FBI got terrorists iPhone, they wants to unlock it in order to find clues for investigation of that attack. So far looks all reasonable. But the way FBI wanted to unlock that phone is what controversial. They demand Apple to create the backdoor and that what our society can not accept. We all know, that government is everywhere, “Big brother is watching you” and all this stuff. But government is not the only one who can possibly watch us: history knows the examples, when government of other countries got their hands one some people private information. And that is why we have encryption - to protect the data. But government is against encryption, since “terrorists are using it”. But regular people wants for their private data to be private and therefore they use encryption. It’s getting messy, let’s figure it out:
We have four abstract teams: government, “bad guys”, citizens and tech companies.
Team 1: Government. They wants to break the encryption, so they can prevent attacks of the “bad guys” and , well, watch citizens. Their first goal reason against encryption is pretty straightforward and reasonable, let’s look at the second. Depends on the country, government is watching citizens for several possible reasons: to catch “bad guys” or to protect themselves, since the government is corrupted and citizens wants to fix it.
Team 2: “bad guys”. It might be a terrorists, spies, other governments, anyone, who wants to break the encryption to get their hands on encrypted data of all other teams. But at the same time the want to preserve encryption for themselves so government can’t catch them.
Team 3: citizens. They wants to preserve encryption, so their private data can be secured. But at the same time they wants government to catch “bad guys”.
Team 4: Tech companies. That’s the team that stucked between a rock and a hard place. They are the ones, who are making encryption strong, so citizen’s data can be secured, so the government secrets can be secured, so the “bad guys” won’t get their hands on secured data and attack other teams. But at the same time government and citizens are pushing Tech companies to cooperate and make security system less secure, so “bad guys can’t hide”.
So far this situation really looks like some weird twisted board game. Well, that game have one last rule: if the encryption is broken by one team - any team can use it.
That’s the game our society is playing right now. In this game, every team has justified goals and clear reasons. Personally, as a part of team Citizens I want to secure my private data, but at the same time I want to want to be a victim of “bad guys” team. The game doesn’t have black or white solutions, there is no teams that will can possibly win all their interests. Understanding this scheme I really can’t stand against or for encryption, I can just observe how society will play this game on a historical scale.
P.S. FBI didn’t need Apple’s help to unlock that one terrorist's iPhone. I know at least two possible ways they could unlock it themselves. FBI really just needed Apple to create backdoor to 1) show their influence on society, 2) make it easier to unlock other iPhones.
