By: Tim Sparapani

A federal judge’s order to help the Justice Department unlock a phone used by a suspect in the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings has put unprecedented pressure on Apple. In a letter to customers detailing the company’s opposition, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that there are “implications far beyond the legal case at hand.” Yes, the owner of the phone–Syed Rizwan Farook‘s former employer–has given permission to search the device. But those who view the case as a potential means to combat the threat of terrorism are missing its threat to liberty, its potentially dangerous precedent, and the fallout to technological security. Consider:

Apple has said it complied with government search warrants and subpoenas. The Justice Department’s motion for Apple to disable particular security features on the phone presses the company to reformulate its operating software so that U.S. investigators can learn whether Mr. Farook used the iPhone to communicate with others about the November shootings. Forcing companies to create technologies to break their operating systems or override security features creates an after-the-incident forensic tool to figure out what may have happened. This does not actually deter or prevent terrorism. People determined to carry out attacks will continue to do so. They will simply use the encrypted products and devices sold by companies based outside the U.S. or other countries whose governments pry open their devices. At the same time, security protections for all consumers of those products will be weakened.

Such a move would set a dangerous international precedent. If the U.S. government forces Apple to undermine its technology there will be no means for companies to take a principled stand when rogue regimes, dictatorships, oligarchs, and other bad actors around the world make a similar request. One nation’s terrorist is another’s journalist. Or reformer, or freedom fighter, or rights advocate. In the wrong hands, the implications could extend to instances regarding human life, free speech, privacy, and other fundamental human rights around the globe.

In the immediate and long term, there is also a malware risk. Forcing Apple to reformulate its operating system is all but asking for the introduction of a bug, flaw, or defect–those forced upon companies by governments and those introduced through the vulnerabilities created by criminal hackers, identity thieves, and the government-sponsored spies of foreign nations.

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By Tim Sparapani:

Late last year in Washington something of consequence happened: Two federal agencies decided to jointly regulate consumer privacy issues. And just this week, dozens of consumer and privacy advocates are pushing one of those agencies – the Federal Communications Commission – to vigorously enforce consumer privacy rights.

Given the turf-conscious nature of Washington, the success of last year’s unusual agreement is deserving of critical review. There are high stakes for American consumers who expect privacy violations to be policed properly. For businesses in the converging communications, Internet, and app spaces that rely on their ability to use customer data, doubling the number of privacy cops could create significant headaches.

Traditionally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been the lead agency for consumer privacy issues. The U.S. has a handful of consumer privacy laws that are sector- or industry-specific. For example, there are statutes on the books that provide authority to regulate the data of health care patients, students and minors. For nearly everything else the FTC has a sort of catch-all consumer privacy enforcement authority not authorized by statute but built up principally over the last 25 years through a series of policy pronouncements and enforcement actions against companies. The FTC uses its core power to police unfair or deceptive trade practices when companies do not live up to their own statements concerning, and promises regarding, their collection, sharing, usage and protection of their customers’ personally identifiable information. Unless a separate privacy statute grants regulatory authority to a different federal agency, the FTC has assumed it is the privacy cop on the beat.

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By Tim Sparapani:

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, there was plenty of high-tech gadgetry on display — from virtual-reality goggles to the latest incarnation of the hoverboard. But one of the hottest tickets was an hour-long conversation with a couple of D.C. wonks.

CES President Gary Shapiro hosted back-to-back fireside chats with Federal Communications Commission (FCC ) Chairman Tom Wheeler and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Edith Ramirez to discuss consumer privacy. It’s a topic that has tech executives grinding their teeth in frustration.

Thanks to a recent memorandum of understanding triggered by the Open Internet Order (“Order”) and signed by the two agencies, there are now two cops on the privacy beat.

The order redrew privacy turf when the FCC finalized it this spring. The main purpose of the order was to classify the Internet as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act in the interest of cementing net neutrality. What most of the mainstream press didn’t pick up on at the time was that the order also greatly expanded the FCC’s authority to investigate and enforce perceived privacy violations by broadband companies.

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