Apple’s defiance of a court order to hack into one of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone has been polarized into a protection of privacy versus national security debate. On FOX & Friends this morning, Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said the battle goes far beyond that.
"The FBI can hire the brightest people in the country to figure out how to do this, but it can’t conscript Apple,” he says. "This is not a case, as I see it, where Apple has information that the FBI has to have that will help it solve a crime, and Apple can destroy that information, therefore, the FBI has to grab it right away. This is a case where the information that the FBI wants doesn’t exist...It looks like, to me this is a business decision on the part of Apple."
It’s been 11 weeks since the deadly attack that took 14 lives, and the FBI still is unable to unlock the cellphone in question. FBI Director James Comey explained to Congress, “It is a big problem for law enforcement armed with a search warrant when you find a device that can't be opened, even though the judge says there's probable cause to open it…. It's not about us trying to get a backdoor – a term that confuses me, frankly. I don't want a door. I don't want a window. I don't want a sliding glass door. I would like people to comply with court orders."
Judge Napolitano recognizes the FBI’s desire to access what’s inside the phone but says it cannot make a private company make up for its own shortcomings.
“The FBI can hire Apple engineers away…The government has all the money in the world. Believe it or not, they have more than Apple. They can hire engineers they want or hire them away from Apple."
Legal limitations aside, FOX & Friends viewers overwhelmingly agree that Apple needs to comply with the court order. 73% of respondents to a FOX & Friends Twitter poll said that Apple should comply with the court order while the remaining 27% were against it.
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