Gadgetory

a historic battle for the future of cybersecurity is waging between Silicon Valley and law enforcement I'm Bridget Carey this is your scene at Update the future of your privacy and the security of all software now rests in the fate of a legal battle between Apple and the FBI on the surface the issue may sound simple Apple has been ordered by a judge to help the government break into a locked iphone for an investigation and Apple is refusing but before you jump to conclusions here's a quick breakdown of what exactly the government is asking for and how encryption works the Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to access the locked iphone 5c that belonged to Syed Farook he's a shooter in the San Bernardino terrorist attack from December that killed 14 people but there's a passcode on the iPhone and if the FBI guess is the wrong passcode 10 times everything on the iPhone is white so the FBI makes a request to a judge please order Apple to write a new piece of software to load into the phone so that the FBI can try an unlimited number of pass codes to get into the phone without the data being all erased a California federal magistrate judge then makes the order for Apple to comply essentially asking Apple to cut a security hole into its iPhone software but Apple is refusing and appealing the decision CEO Tim Cook issued a statement arguing that this would undermine the security of all future iPhones so why won't a police make an exception for this one terrorism case well security experts all say the same thing if such a backdoor exists if software to hack an iPhone exists then it can be used again and again by the government for anything and more importantly software can be easily copied and sold then anyone can use it to hack into your phone security then becomes pointless for all of us going forward and that is why this is so controversial if you want to stop a terrorist you break all means to protect everyone from any type of hacker as well this is not just an Apple issue other tech companies want customers to trust their data to be protected the head of Google products sundar Pichai offers somewhat tame words of support to Apple saying on Twitter that forcing companies to an able hacking could compromise users privacy so what happens now Apple says it's gonna fight this legally it could go as high as that you Supreme Court but in the meantime a judge could in theory punish Apple and hold the company in contempt and impose fines or even throws someone like Tim Cook in jail but that sort of drama seems unlikely that's it for this tech news update you can dive in deeper at cnn.com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey