iPhone privacy debate isn’t as simple as some think
Steve Swartout’s letter to The Bee (March 24) regarding Apple’s refusal to help the FBI break into an iPhone cites a number of hypothetical situations from the past that could have been prevented, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps he should look a little further. Would the attack on Pearl Harbor have been stopped if the FBI had broken into the phones of Japanese-Americans? How many more Jews would have been exterminated if the Nazis had been able to break into their iPhones? How much sooner would they have captured Anne Frank before she did whatever it was they suspected her of doing? Or what would have happened if the Germans had cracked the iPhones on the Manhattan Project? And what would have happened if the FBI had the iPhone code for civil rights and Vietnam War protesters in the 1960?
More to think about!
Thomas Zia, Clovis
This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 6:49 AM with the headline "iPhone privacy debate isn’t as simple as some think."