Apple Tells Court That The DOJ Is Lying About It Advertising The Fact That Encryption Keeps Out Law Enforcement

from the not-how-it-works dept

We already covered Apple's reply brief in the fight over getting into Syed Farook's encrypted work iPhone, highlighting a number of lies by the DOJ's filing. But I wanted to focus on a few more highlighted in the additional declarations filed by Apple as well. The DOJ kept insisting that Apple built this feature specifically to keep law enforcement out, which is ridiculous. Apple notes repeatedly that it built the feature to keep its customers safer from malicious attacks, most of which are not from law enforcement. But the DOJ keeps pretending that it was a deliberate attempt to mock law enforcement. In the DOJ's filing:

Here, Apple has deliberately used its control over its software to block law-enforcement requests for access to the contents of its devices, and it has advertised that feature to sell its products.

As part of its reply, however, Apple has a company advertising director, Robert Ferrini, note that the company has never promoted keeping law enforcement out as a feature in its ads:

Since the introduction of iOS 8 in October 2014, Apple has placed approximately 1,793 advertisements worldwide—627 in the United States alone—of different types, including, print ads, television ads, online ads, cinema ads, radio ads and billboards. Those advertisements have generated an estimated 253 billion impressions worldwide and 99 billion impressions in the United States alone (an impression is an estimate of the number of times an ad is viewed or displayed online).

Of those advertisements, not a single one has ever advertised or promoted the ability of Apple’s software to block law enforcement requests for access to the contents of Apple devices.

Indeed, only three of those advertisements reference security at all, and all three related to the Apple Pay service, and then only to say that Apple Pay is "safer than a credit card, and keeps your info yours."

I'm assuming the DOJ, if it decides to push this point, will argue that it wasn't talking about those kinds of advertisements, but Apple's statements to the press, but still, there's a strong point here. Contrary to what the DOJ is saying, no, the company does not proactively advertise the encryption as a way to keep law enforcement out. Or, in short, no, FBI, strong encryption on the iPhone just isn't about you.

Filed Under: advertising, all writs act, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, law enforcement, robert ferrini
Companies: apple