Apple's CEO claims he never heard of a case where the government demanded a company aid its investigators in defeating it's own encryption software.
In a message to customers published on Apple's website, the CEO said: "We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data."
How odd. I found
this case memorable. This is what Lavabit's founder and CEO
posted after he was pounded flat by the law and law enforcement:
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
That's pretty damning. On the gripping hand:
Even though Levison shut down the site, it is possible the U.S. got what it was after. Some of the NSA documents leaked by Snowden show that the NSA collects SSL-encrypted data in bulk, in the hope of later obtaining the private key so it can go back and decrypt everything.
Gives a new meaning to backwards compatible.
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