Apple is engaged in a major standoff with the U.S. government over the security of its iPhones.
The FBI received a court order, directing Apple to help break into the iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple is refusing to comply.
The court fight has sparked a much broader debate: Can tech companies uphold their responsibilities to comply with law enforcement’s criminal investigations while still keeping customers’ data secure?
Here are the latest developments — and what you need to know. Last updated: February 23, 10 a.m ET.
1) February 23: Bill Gates weighs in on the debate with a more nuanced view than most of his peers in the technology industry. In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates says the FBI is looking for specific information, not “some general thing.” But in a subsequent interview with Bloomberg, Gates says he was generally concerned about government overreach.
2) February 22: Tim Cook emails Apple employees, thanking them for their support. He laments the fact that Apple is fighting with the U.S. government but says “data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people” is at stake.
3) February 22: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is “sympathetic with Tim [Cook] and Apple on this one.” Facebook had previously issued a statement of support.
4) February 21: FBI Director James Comey says the agency’s request is limited: “We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” he writes on the Lawfare blog.
5) February 19: Senior Apple executives say investigators may have screwed up the handling of Farook’s iPhone. The FBI ordered San Bernardino county to change Farook’s iCloud password hours after the shooting, preventing a potential iCloud backup that may have revealed some of the information it is now unable to retrieve.
6) February 19: The Justice Department says its request “presents no danger for any other phone.” It accuses Apple of resisting out of “concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.”
7) February 19: The House Energy and Commerce Committee asks Cook and Comey to testify. No date is set for the hearing, but the committee asks Cook and Comey to reply to the request by February 24.
8) February 17: Google CEO Sundar Pichai fires off a mini-tweetstorm in support of Apple. He says complying with valid requests for data is “wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent.”
9) February 17: Edward Snowden calls Apple’s fight with the FBI, “the most important tech case in a decade.” He says he supports Apple.
10) February 17: In a long letter to customers, Tim Cook explains his decision not to comply with the court order. “The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers,” he writes.
