PORTLAND, Maine — The fight for your personal and private information is pitting Apple and its new operating system against police across the country. Apple says it will no longer unlock iPhones for police, even with a search warrant.
Last week, Apple unveiled its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. With that new phone and operating system, iOS 8, there was a smaller, quiet rollout for its new privacy policy.
Apple says its made it impossible to hand over your phone’s data — photos, messages, contacts, iTunes content and call history — to police. Apple says it encrypts your passcode, and it’s not stored on any server, so Apple doesn’t even know that code.
“So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8,” Apple explained in a statement to Portland television station WGME, CBS 13.
“Apple is clearly responding to their customers, and customers are demanding privacy,” Zachary Heiden with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine said as privacy advocates declare a digital age victory.
Consider this Apple’s response to June’s ruling from the Supreme Court. It decided police must get a warrant before searching a cellphone. With the old operating system, Apple would unlock passcode protected phones with that search warrant. Now, company leaders say, they won’t because they can’t.
“Apple’s decision is going to affect law enforcement. Under this new operating system, we can’t crack it, Apple won’t be able to crack it — that phone is basically useless,” Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said.
Joyce said iPhones and iPads have been valuable investigative tools, but he said he also understands the struggle to protect all that personal information stored at your fingertips.
“The reality is it’s a balance. That pendulum will swing both ways; there’s some good out of it, but some bad out of it as well,” Joyce said.
This privacy policy is only tied to Apple’s latest operating system. Phones running older systems don’t encrypt passcodes. Following Apple, Google-owned Android said its next update will include the same kind of encryption, essentially blocking police.
Apple will still turn over data stored in the iCloud backup system, but you can turn that data backup option off.