Called Out: The Global Consequences of Apple’s Fight with the FBI

By now, the details of Apple’s fight with the FBI are well known: the FBI wants access to an iPhone belonging to the deceased terrorism suspect Syed Farook, who was involved in the San Bernardino, California, attack on December 2, 2015. Farook’s iPhone is encrypted, so the FBI wants Apple to issue a tailored software update that would allow it to bypass the encryption. Apple has responded by refusing to write special software that would eliminate its security protections.

For both sides, the stakes are high. Apple says that complying with the FBI’s orders would set a dangerous precedent,

Access the full article here.

Other Writing:

Essay

Information Attacks on Democracies – with Bruce Schneier

Democracy is an information system. That’s the starting place of our new paper: “Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy.” In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to explain why the same disinformation campaigns that act as a stabilizing influence ...
Read Article
Essay

Big Brother’s Liberal Friends

IT IS strange that the Obama administration has so avidly continued many of the national-security policies that the George W. Bush administration endorsed. The White House has sidelined the key recommendations of its own advisers about how to curtail the overreach of the National Security Agency (NSA). It has failed to prosecute those responsible for ...
Read Article