The United States Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, has only chimed in a couple of times in regards to the ongoing battle between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the latest comments are certainly getting more creative.
Up until this point, The U.S. AG has only said that she hopes Apple will comply with the Department of Justice’s efforts to compel the company to help the FBI access an iPhone 5c used by one of the shooters at the San Bernardino event in 2015. Of course, Apple doesn’t see it the same way as the government does, and is fighting the court order to do just that.
In an effort to get even more public eyes on the government’s side of things, Lynch went on a recent airing of The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert, and talked a variety of different topics. That includes a brief shift in talking points regarding Apple. In the interview, Lynch says that Apple should help the customer, which is really the county of San Bernardino:
“What we’re asking [Apple] to do is to do what the customer wants. The real owner of the phone is the County, the employer of one of the terrorists who is now dead.”
One consistent element here is that Lynch continues to play it pretty soft with the situation in general, using some pretty standard political answers, even if it means not really answering a specific question. It’s obvious, though, that the Attorney General is on the side of the government in this case, and that she has to use at least some of the same rhetoric that’s been fired at Apple since this whole thing started, which she does in this interview, too.
The government is going to use a variety of talking points and pivots as individuals talk to more people, especially outside the courts. Public awareness of this case is growing, and polls are starting to show an increasing amount of support for Apple. Lynch seeming to remain neutral, and actually use “the customer” as a reason for Apple to help the government in unlocking a phone, is probably a pretty good tactic.
At the same time, the Director of the FBI has gone on record saying that the case with the iPhone 5c in San Bernardino is one that, practically inevitably, will set a precedence for future cases, and that the FBI will use that decision (if it goes their way) in future cases. There are already more than a dozen iPhones at the center of court battles right now, and there will be plenty more down the road, so this case is an important one for privacy across the board.
You can watch Lynch’s interview with Colbert in the video below. The bit about Apple and the iPhone begins at the 2:55 mark.
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