The Apple corporation is not criminal.
This seems obvious, yet Apple is still facing the threat of involuntary labor. Ratified after the Civil War, the 13th Amendment prevents this sort of involuntary servitude unless as punishment for a crime.
The FBI, for understandable reasons, wants Apple to unlock the San Bernardino terrorists’ cell phones, which is set to erase its data if the passcode is incorrectly entered too many times.
To unlock this phone, Apple is being asked or demanded to write a different version of the iOS without the security features to use to boot the device as a sort of backdoor. This is not like normal privacy cases in which the government is the one doing the searching and seizing.
The Fourth Amendment establishes the warrant requirement for most searches and seizures. While it’s important to note the FBI does have a warrant for this cell phone, searching an apple cell phone isn’t like searching a house or a car. This search requires action on the part of Apple.
If the FBI has its way, Apple will be forced to perform a service like writing software code for the government. It is a dark day when the government can compel private entities to work toward its ends.
Much has been made about the privacy implications of allowing the government to have access to something that could get past the security features of the iPhone, one of the top selling phones in the world.
While this is an important debate to be had, we should not ignore the tremendous shift of power that would occur should the FBI force Apple to perform a service at its order.
Citizens of a free state should not have to face the possibility of being conscripted by their government, except in the utmost of emergency circumstances. The most distasteful fact of this matter is the FBI in all likelihood does not even need Apple’s assistance.
The FBI has many options that do not involve coercing Apple help to get into the phone.
The fact that the FBI still leans so hard on Apple lends credence to the theory that this is intended to give the Bureau tools to access everyone’s iPhones. If this is truly the case, then one must wonder why the Bureau is willing to spend months in court litigating this issue.
Forcing Apple to write software code without compensation for the FBI hearkens back to days when nations used to force their citizens to perform labor as a civic duty. We should be very careful vesting this power with the FBI, lest we return to this.
