Last month, the United States Justice Department has issued a demand for Apple to come up with a backdoor that would allow them to hack an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who is involved in San Bernardino shooting.
A brief filed last week revealed that the Department of Justice has once again said that it's demand is modest. Furthermore, the government believes that Apple is trying to "alarm" the court by signifying that the order could mean other companies would also be ordered to compromise the security of their products or break their crypto.
Amidst all these, pressure has been added to the government as their officials are privately debating how to handle its current stand-off with WhatsApp, another technology company. The government wants to have access to this world's largest mobile instant messaging application.
A court fight with WhatsApp, according to StraitsTimes, could "open a new front in the Obama administration's dispute with Silicon Valley over encryption, security and privacy."
WhatsApp is an application owned by Facebook and allows its users to send and receive messages as well as make phone calls using the Internet. However, it was only last year that an encryption was added to the conversations. These encryptions now make it impossible for the Justice Department to read or listen to messages and calls, respectively.
The war over encryption has been fought by those who value the security and privacy of other people. An amicus brief, authored by EFF and supported by 46 computer scientists, security experts, and mathematicians, states that "forcing Apple to create and digitally sign a custom version of iOS that disables key security features would violate the First Amendment." To give the American people a clear picture, if the government triumphs in San Bernardino, it could "force companies to give it access to software update systems, and send their users government surveillance software disguised as security patches," EFF reports.
Sources said that the wiretap order for WhatsApp is not a terrorism investigation. The location of the investigation was also unclear.
However, the company said with regard to a Brazilian police arresting a Facebook executive after it failed to turn over information about a customer who was the subject of a drug trafficking investigation: "WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have."
CNBC also has this to say with regard to the issue: "To understand the battle lines, consider this imperfect analogy from the predigital world: If the Apple dispute is akin to whether the F.B.I. can unlock your front door and search your house, the issue with WhatsApp is whether it can listen to your phone calls. In the era of encryption, neither question has a clear answer."
