Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., took aim at his Democratic challenger Deborah Ross Thursday for hedging about whether Apple should have been compelled to help the FBI by unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
“By refusing to say whether FBI investigators should be able to access the phone of an individual who killed more than a dozen people, Deborah Ross is standing in the way of valuable information that could thwart future attacks and help investigators piece together a senseless tragedy,” Alex Johnson, director of strategic operations for Burr’s campaign, said Thursday.
That attack marks the first time this year that Apple’s fight with the FBI has emerged as a wedge issue in the general election of a Senate campaign, according to a National Republican Senatorial Committee aide. It’s also a sign that Burr regards his race as competitive, even though most Senate campaign watchers tend to focus on the more obvious battlegrounds in the Midwest.
Ross was asked about the issue almost a month ago, before the FBI succeeded in hacking the phone without Apple’s help, and gave an elliptical answer.
“I think we should be able to get into the phone; the problem is are we going to get in in a way that’s going to take advantage of people’s security?” Ross said during a local TV interview. “You can always get a warrant to do it, so the government ultimately may be able to do it. But wouldn’t it be preferable for both of them to figure out how to do it in the narrowest possible way and not have the courts resolve it?”
FBI officials had a search warrant for the phone, but that wasn’t sufficient to obtain the information on the locked iPhone because of the device’s encryption technology. “We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly,” FBI director James Comey wrote in February. Apple refused, saying that the creation of the software required to do that would act as a “cancer” for all their software security.
Burr hopes his post as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, where he is already working on legislation to help national security officials in future fights with tech companies, will give him an edge if the race focuses on national security issues. “If Deborah Ross cannot handle questions about terrorism, how will she be able to handle actually making decisions when it comes to Americans safety?” Johnson said.
The effectiveness of such attacks on Ross could play a significant role in deciding whether Burr remains in office after this year, especially if Republicans nominate a presidential candidate who doesn’t excite North Carolina voters.
“He’s not as well known as he ought to be for being an incumbent senator,” one Republican data analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Examiner. “There’s going to be a lot of investment from both the Democrats and the Republicans and that is one where the top of the ticket really decides it. that could ultimately be decided by one or two points.”
