An ominous “What now?” hung in the air after the FBI circumvented intransigent Apple to hack the San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone back in March. The FBI paid a third-party firm that had come forward offering to unlock the phone but wouldn’t disclose its methods to the feds. Thus concluded a contentious lawsuit—which most of us had followed on our iPhones, naturally. But the broader issues it raised were hardly settled.
Now that government hacking of civilian data has solid precedent—regardless of our tech overlords’ attempted rebellion—law enforcement, tech companies, and cybersecurity agencies public and private have to ask: When it comes to hacking, “What are the new rules of engagement?” The House Internet Caucus hosted a panel to address the question this week, and not unsurprisingly, Apple’s anti-government, pseudo-countercultural stance didn’t get a ton of support there.
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