Editorial: U.S. vs. Apple is latest twist on liberty vs. security

The intensifying battle between digital leviathan Apple and the federal government is being waged on uncharted ground, both technically and legally. The implications are enormous, and some of them are not yet fully comprehensible -- probably not even to legal and technical experts at the center of the dispute.

The issue at hand, of course, is a recent order by a federal magistrate that Apple must help the FBI hack into an iPhone used by the radical Islamic husband-and-wife terrorists who murdered 14 people in California last December. Apple and other technology companies argue that the government is threatening the integrity of technology protecting the legitimate private information of customers, including such things as pictures and video, contact lists, text messages, health details, etc.

The government's argument, as articulated by White House spokesman Josh Earnest, is that the FBI is "simply asking for something that would have an impact on this one device."

That's where the technology, the law and the ethics of the matter get complicated.

The government has long been able to get traditional land line telephone records and, with proper authorization, tap into specific telephone conversations.

The telecom industry's argument now is that what the government would do could not be limited to "this one device," and that it would render encryption codes virtually useless. Apple CEO Tim Cook compared the necessary software to a "master key" that would unlock the encrypted information of hundreds of millions of customers, with no way to keep that technology under wraps: "Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge."

Certainly the case has made for some interesting political alignments. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump agreed "100 percent with the courts," and also, as it turns out, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., with whom he probably agrees on little else. But another Republican, Rep. Justin Amash of Michican, said the Justice Department's demand for the encrypted information is "unconscionable and unconstitutional."

There are a couple of interesting paradoxes at the heart of this case. The more familiar one is the ever-delicate balance between liberty and security, the relative values of which have been debated since long before Benjamin Franklin famously opined that those who would sacrifice the former for the latter deserve neither.

The other paradox is that this is a case of technology being both too sophisticated for our legal system to accommodate it, and not quite sophisticated enough. Digital technology long ago sped past the realm of traditional warranted, targeted wiretaps and the like; yet telecom experts themselves claim the technology does not yet exist to target specific devices without jeopardizing the privacy of the rest.

Which raises the question: Is science moving too quickly or too slowly? The obvious answer is yes.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Editorial: U.S. vs. Apple is latest twist on liberty vs. security."