Rabbi Abraham Cooper of Simon Wiesenthal Center: Apple, unlock that iPhone

One of the most prominent voices in America on racism and hate speech has taken sides in the ongoing legal - and public relations - battle between Apple and the FBI.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of Los Angeles’ Simon Wiesenthal Center, wants Apple to unlock an iPhone 5C issued to San Beardino terror attack gunman Syed Farook which the federal govement believes might contain information valuable to its investigation.

Apple has refused a court order to do so, saying that by creating the software necessary to disable an auto-deletion feature, it’ll be providing a back door that hackers and third-world dictators can use on other iPhones, as well as creating a legal precedent that will have law enforcement retuing to unlock many more iPhones in the future. Apple has said it will fight the order to the Supreme Court.

“Apple made a mistake in their decision,” Cooper said Wednesday. “It is within the technological capabilities to come up with this information, and share that information with the govement. Instead of taking a swipe at the Supreme Court, they should find a technological way of sharing this information.”

Farook, a San Beardino County Department of Public Health employee, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, staged a terror attack on Dec. 2 at the Inland Regional Center in San Beardino. Fourteen people were killed, most of them attendees at a training session for Farook’s department, and 22 were injured. Farook and his wife were killed hours later in a shoot-out with police.

The iPhone in question is a work phone issued to Farook. Two personal phones belonging to Farook and Malik were destroyed by the couple and a hard drive belonging to them has never been found. Now, the FBI wants Apple to disable a security feature on the work phone that would cause all the data on it to be deleted after 10 failed attempts to guess its password, saying there may be data on it valuable in their ongoing investigation.

Cooper said he’s sympathetic with law-abiding people who value the privacy offered by Apple’s encryption technology, and similar technology offered by other smartphones and computers. But he said he doesn’t believe the brilliant minds of Silicon Valley can’t find a way to get law enforcement to open Farook’s iPhone without also enabling hackers and foreign govements to be able to do the same on other iPhones.

“I’m not asking them to hand over the keys to everything,” Cooper said. “There must be space found between the two.”

He also doesn’t buy the argument that, even if the technology to break into other iPhones isn’t replicated, the legal precedent set by Apple agreeing to the court order will open the door to more such requests by law enforcement.

“When the govement is asking about one phone - a govement-issued phone - that’s not a precedent; that’s one phone,” Cooper said.

That said, he acknowledges that there would be more occasions where Apple (and fellow smartphone creators) would be asked to open other phones in the future, especially as ISIS and other groups urge their followers to use encryption in all communication.

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“I’m just urging them: Don’t lawyer up, use your collective genius, come up with Plans B, C and D and let your consumers know ‘these are the situations where we might open up the phones,’” he said. “We’re not interested in making things easier for tyrants, we just want our neighbors in San Beardino and elsewhere be safer.”

And Cooper says the United States, and other would-be targets of terrorists, can’t wait for the results of a drawn-out legal battle.

“When it comes to terrorism, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for five, six, seven, eight years of litigation in different courts,” Cooper said. “We need these companies to take the lead.”

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