What Went Down At The CNN Republican Debate

“The order is not: put a backdoor in everyone’s cellphone,” said Cruz in response to the question about a court order Apple is fighting. The order, following the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, asks Apple to remove security features in future devices. The ones that exist now are keeping authorities from accessing files on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple says the request is unconstitutional. First, this court order intersects with questions of digital privacy and product design, but projects the debate into the future iterations of the product. Second and more importantly, it raises the question of what access the government should have to data on devices and platforms, from the iPhone to Gmail. But aside from the question of what’s legal, there’s the matter of what’s actually done. The government has already used hacking techniques to access data on the SIM cards used in most cellphones globally.

Whether or not complying with the FBI would be “bad for America,” as Tim Cook claims, it would pretty clearly be bad for Apple. Apple increasingly depends on overseas markets to drive its sales growth, and consumers in many of those markets are concerned about protecting their privacy from governments. As law professor Mark Bartholomew told The New York Times this week, Apple is “playing the long game,” working to develop a reputation for being willing to defend its customers from government snooping.

More Americans side with Apple than with the FBI in the dispute over whether Apple must unlock a smartphone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, but a plurality of Republicans disagree with Apple’s opposition to a court order to unlock the phone, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The candidates are taking that position, too.