The government and the intelligence community, as well as its congressional backers, is trying to assert that its efforts to force Apple to break the security of the iPhone is all about security. National security. But what about your security? Here’s Tim Cook's customer letter explaining why it was fighting the court order to break security in the iPhone:
Smartphones, led by iPhone, have become an essential part of our lives. People use them to store an incredible amount of personal information, from our private conversations to our photos, our music, our notes, our calendars and contacts, our financial information and health data, even where we have been and where we are going.
All that information needs to be protected from hackers and criminals who want to access it, steal it, and use it without our knowledge or permission. Customers expect Apple and other technology companies to do everything in our power to protect their personal information, and at Apple we are deeply committed to safeguarding their data.
Creating a backdoor into this phone, which is what the FBI is demanding Apple do, seems reasonable enough, right? It's just one phone, after all. Except it isn't.
Authorities have the phone in their lawful possession, and they only need help seeing what’s on it in case it can tell them something about how the San Bernardino shooters operated. But the hacked software the court and the FBI wants Apple to provide would be general. It would work on any phone of the same model. It has to. […]
What the FBI wants to do would make us less secure, even though it’s in the name of keeping us safe from harm. Powerful governments, democratic and totalitarian alike, want access to user data for both law enforcement and social control. We cannot build a backdoor that only works for a particular type of government, or only in the presence of a particular court order.
Either everyone gets security or no one does. Either everyone gets access or no one does. The current case is about a single iPhone 5c, but the precedent it sets will apply to all smartphones, computers, cars and everything the Internet of Things promises.
Once this precedent is set, there isn't any turning back. Apple opens the iPhone for the U.S. government, and all the countries where iPhones are sold demand the same. And then they demand it for all the things that we trust to secure our personal information. Apple creates the vulnerability, and suddenly hackers everywhere have the keys to our lives. This doesn't end with this one phone. It's not about this one phone for the FBI—it's about setting the precedent to force any and all manufacturers to break encryption on their devices, leaving all of us less secure in our daily lives.
There's more background and fantastic explanation in The Technomancer's diary.