Apple filed an appeal late on Tuesday, protesting the government’s order that it create software to help the FBI to hack an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the mass-shooting of 14 people in San Bernardino.
The appeal was filed just before 11pm PST, and lists formal objections to Judge Sheri Pym’s order — stating that Apple is making the appeal out of what the company calls,”an abundance of caution.”
The end of Tuesday was the latest that Apple could legally protest Judge Pym’s decision, which had been handed down two weeks earlier in a February 16 court hearing.
Although the case is far from over, Apple had some good news yesterday — when a Congressional hearing with both Apple’s chief attorney and FBI head James Comey seemed to go in Apple’s favor, as legislators accused the Justice Department of overstepping its bounds in terms of user privacy. Another ruling on a similar case has also come down on Apple’s side.
Perhaps sensing a shift in the way that this larger issue is going, Attorney General Loretta Lynch yesterday pleaded with tech leaders at a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco for companies to engage in a “frank dialogue and fruitful partnership” with Washington to stop criminals and terrorists abusing devices like encrypted smartphones.
We’ll have to wait to see how the dust settles but, in the meantime, Apple is certainly not backing down when it comes to its stance on user privacy.
Source: Politico
