Looking for common ground in Apple vs. the FBI

A top Apple lawyer and the FBI’s top tech official agreed Tuesday that cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the tech giant could avoid stand-offs over how to access encrypted data as well as the need for law enforcement to hire its own hackers to decrypt information of criminals and terrorists.

But they disagreed on what the cooperation would look like.

Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel, told a House commerce oversight subcommittee that the company already works with law enforcement regularly and would help develop the FBI’s capability to decrypt technology itself, but won’t open “back doors” to its iPhones due to the security risk that would pose to all users. The FBI had demanded that Apple write a new version of its iOS operating system to give access to the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

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