In German, the government established a surveillance program with an anonymous software containing Trojans. Once it is installed in a private computer, the access to all of the data is under permission even though Germany officers said no one has the ability of obtaining the control of this mobile device except for themselves. Do you believe that? Absolutely no. It is known to almost everyone that any system with Trojans has security vulnerabilities that can be used by intruders. The surveillance program surely puts the citizens who trust it in big danger and with no sufficient protection or any explanation or detail at the meanwhile.
British surveillance program (known as Tempora) is more complicated but more powerful. The program became operational from 2011 and the data it collected ever since is shared with NSA. There is a secluded machine settled on optical fibers at the Atlantic sea bottom to collect the global information and oversee the online activities in Facebook, Twitter, and email records. 200 optical fibers with 30-days memory capability ensure U.K. the rank as the equal intelligence magnate as America. To confront with this situation, many IT companies begin to set overseas parts or all of their servers to earn trust from the consumers and social media. However, these companies are still under surveillance of British government and have to cooperate with the intelligence agencies.
The last but not least country is America and its well-known PRISM. Since 2007, NSA and FBI have worked together to collect stored communications on the internet whether they are encrypted or not. It was known to all after Snowden’s revelations in June 2013, American President Obama had to announce that it is “a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people.” Actually, the fact is more of the opposite: the government has received the permission from U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and definitely keep people away from the so-called freedom. Washington Post also asserted that what Americans expect is that government never abused such power.
Government play a conflicting role in data-protection field between offense and defense. From all of the examples above, it can be concluded that government tends to abuse the trust given by its people, and surveillance program itself has become the invasion to individual privacy. It is reasonable that the unlimited power should be put under certain supervision and used only in national security field rather than normal online activities. In the article “Mathematicians Discuss the Snowden Revelations”, Preneel (2015) argues that if the NSA wants the academic and standards communities to consider its designs, it has to offer full transparency. Moreover, he maintains that the impact of mass surveillance is underestimated. Since technological developments provide intelligence agencies unprecedented power, it is challenging to develop effective and transparent oversight mechanisms to administer these agencies. Furthermore, government database is weak and easy to break down as compared to technology companies’. If it were hacked, there is no compensation for ordinary people.
Since government is not reliable in data protection, should technology companies be trusted? My answer is yes. Back to the Apple vs FBI debate, in my opinion, Apple’s standing for the side of protecting privacy is brave and wise in the battle. Besides, the more important result is that the consumers will benefit from the series actions because Apple and other IT companies are trying their best to defend the fundamental rules in cyber security field. For Internet companies, it will do harm to their own interest if consumers’ privacy cannot be guaranteed. There is a report from ITIF which summarized that the companies in cloud computation have lost 35 billion dollars after Snowden’s revelations. And more, according to the reported statistics, in 2015 the whole American Internet technology service industry takes 25 percentage of the total loss. Hence, cooperation with FBI means Apple and other IT companies will continue losing their market overseas not limited to the damage of the core value — privacy protection. In my opinion, no one should have the phone password of San Bernardino including Apple, and what the FBI wants is trying to set up an antecedent case to break the security feature of iPhone with purpose to justify their practice of breaching in the name of law. Besides, it turns out that scaring people with "terrorism" has shown to be a very persuasive way to get public support.
Consider this case from another side, what IT companies have done after Snowden’s revelations? As Van der Velden (2015) and Lyon (2015) said, the positive aspect of the impact will direct surveillance and security research into new areas. To state clearly, here is another example to show that IT companies are taking responsibility of consumers and try their best to balance the conflicts between privacy and national security. ISIS attackers in Paris are reported using Telegram to communicate with ISIS Headquarters and release their announcement via it. What is Telegram and what is encrypted communication should be explained first. Telegram Messenger is a powerful encrypted communication software by which users can exchange message, photos, videos and documents in encrypted form. In practice, except for the two users in communicating, no one (even the administrator) has access to the content. Furthermore, the content will be destroyed once it is read. Apart from this feature, Telegram allows users to establish “channel” to release news to at most 200 people. It can be seen that most communication software has installed such an encryption function to prevent hackers and intelligence agencies from stealing information, such as WhatsApp and iMessage. All of these new functions can be seen as a direct result of Snowden’s revelations because those IT companies have to come up with such a strong encryption that the information bearing under it is absolutely safe to fulfill the consumers’ request in privacy protection. So from the perspective of these companies, what the FBI claim will damage the principles that are preserved not easily until today. Encryption should be enhanced rather than weaken, which is the reason why Apple refuses in public. The dangerous precedence will destroy the efforts Apple made in past decades and will deteriorate the data-protection markets in the whole world.
Some argue that there is consideration of protecting its innovations and business market, but what Tim Cook did is to wake up more and more citizens who have never think of their rights in privacy on the Internet and over mobile phones. Apple is the front warrior against federal agencies and hackers. After Snowden’s revelations, Apple put lots of money in product security and earned its fame in cyber security field. Now FBI wants Apple’s cooperation in deciphering someone’s iPhone. But Apple refuses FBI’s iPhone backdoor request. Why the FBI needs Apple to crack the San Bernardino iPhone? Cook argues that there is possibility that the goal of FBI is not to access this one phone, but to set precedence for other phones that they may want to get access into. Another point is Apple cannot just give the password to FBI since only the owner of this iPhone has the password neither Apple after IOS 8.0. There are deeper issues than we can think of. As Daniel Kahn Gillmor (2016) said, the technical details of “auto-erase” feature of iPhone and what showed to the public are misleading the public to trust FBI, because what truly happened in the case is that the encryption is no obstacle to the FBI. Also Edward Snowden (2016) talked about this and beared the same thoughts in the video from the Guardian: it is impossible that only Apple can deactivate certain passcode protections and the truth is that FBI can unlock this iPhone technically. I think it is likely that Apple already cooperated with the FBI to access the data on the iPhone without setting up the backdoor. So if the FBI has already known the method to crack it, all they need now is the permission of law, which means they can easily abuse the power. Also given that Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency employee, is one of the most convincible people in security field and assumed that his word is reliable, this case is not just about technical issues. There are more questions than to answer: should any company, including Apple, be able to access data on private phones?
In general, it is a trend that the technology industry begins to perform against American intelligence agencies after Snowden’s revelations, especially showed above in the case that Apple refuses the FBI’s request. It is good for people because such a hostility against privacy may rouse the public including the industry and citizens and then lead to a more perfect and complete privacy protection system. In the process, encryption serves as an important role for both sides and it safeguards the information in a relatively stable environment that only the user has the key to their “house”. That is exactly what the society need in the past and in the future as well. Therefore, because of encryption, people can enjoy their digital devices without worries of other party that would access their information and truly encryption is the cornerstone of modern life.