Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Apple's Case Against the FBI Is Stronger Than Ever

Buyers of iPhones don’t want the government collecting their data.

January 10, 2020 at 2:30 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

It’s private.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

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As 2020 dawns, we’re mired in another privacy-vs.-security dispute between Apple and the federal government. Once again, the Department of Justice is demanding that the company break into a locked iPhone. Once again, the company is resisting. And once again, the rest of us are silent, worried spectators in a game of “Whom do you trust?”

In particular, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants Apple’s help in unlocking two phones belonging to Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three people last month at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Apple says it has turned over all the data it possesses but refuses to go further and create a backdoor past the encryption that protects its devices.