Lying Government versus Apple's Secretive Tim Cook?

© 2016 Peter Free

 

25 February 2016

 

 

See if you see the Orwellian humor in this

 

From Reuters:

 

 

The Justice Department wants Apple to help access encrypted information stored on [dead San Bernardino terrorist] Farook's county-owned iPhone 5C by writing software that would disable its passcode protections to allow an infinite number of guesses without erasing the data on the device.

 

Apple has said the request amounts to asking a company to hack its own device and would undermine digital security more broadly.

 

"This would be bad for America," Cook told ABC. "It would also set a precedent that I think many people in America would be offended by and when you think about those, which are knowns, compared to something that might be there, I believe we are making the right choice."

 

The government has repeatedly insisted its request in the iPhone case does not amount to "backdoor" access.

 

© 2016 Dustin Volz, UPDATE 3-Apple CEO: Unlocking San Bernardino iPhone would be 'bad for America', Reuters (24 February 2016)

 

 

The moral? — a failure of logic?

 

The Justice people — who cannot get into the iPhone — are telling one of the guys who helped create it that he is wrong about the scope of applicability of the technology required to access its contents.

 

The situation would be amusing, were it not so typical of American government.