A fascinating fight over privacy and security is developing between the two biggest businesses in their respective fields: Apple (one of the most valued companies in the world) and the FBI (top dog in America’s law enforcement agencies and arguably the best-known such agency globally).The showdown is about recovering data from a single iPhone used by a government employee (Syed Farook) who is accused of killing 14 people in San Bernardino in the US last December. But the scope of it extends much, much further.Because iPhones have security settings as well as hardware that prevents anyone cracking the settings, including Apple itself, a US judge ruled that Apple should create a version of its software to allow the FBI to hack into the phone, which runs on Apple’s iOS. This software has been jokingly named FBiOS and doesn’t exist yet.Apple CEO Tim Cook has come out firing in his defence against such an action — calling the FBI’s request “chilling”. And so he should.Apple sells its pr...
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