Father of San Bernardino terror attack victim addresses Apple CEO

The father of a man killed in the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Beardino said in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook that many of the victims and witnesses of the attack believe a third shooter may have been involved, and accessing an iPhone used by the gunman may help determine whether that was the case.

“Recovery of information from the iPhone in question may not lead to anything new. But, what if there is evidence pointing to a third shooter?” said Mark Sandefur, father of Inland Regional Center job coach Larry Daniel Eugene Kaufman, in his letter to Cook. “What if it leads to an unknown terrorist cell? What if others are attacked, and you and I did nothing to prevent it?”

Sandefur’s letter was included in a friend of the court brief filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside Thursday in support of the U.S. govement accessing the work-issued iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook.

The Califoia State Sheriff’s Association, Police Chiefs’ Association and Peace Officers’ Association also filed a joint-brief Thursday supporting the order.

A spate of friend of the court briefs supporting Apple’s opposition to a federal court order compelling the technology giant to build special software that would enable the FBI to hack the phone have already been distributed publicly, and all will be filed Thursday in court. Companies like Facebook and Google, as well as a myriad of privacy advocacy organizations, have come to Apple’s defense.

Thursday, law enforcement organizations and victims of the attack and their family members, like Sandefur, are filing briefs with the court in support of the govement.

In his letter to Cook, Sandefur said he regularly attends FBI briefings on the status of the investigation, and he and other survivors and family members of those who died talk among themselves about the horrors of Dec. 2.

“Some of the survivors come to these meetings pushing walkers, or limping with canes,” Sandefur said in his letter. “They are reminders to me of what they went through.”

“We who lost our family members are reminders to them that it could have been worse. Several of the survivors tell me bone-chilling stories of where they were, and what they saw,” Sandefur wrote in his letter. “Some of them describe in precise detail, laying on the floor, hiding under fuiture and the bodies of their co-workers, that they saw three assailants, not two, walking around in heavy boots as they carried out their murders.”

Larson said Sandefur’s letter expresses “the true stakes” of the dispute in question.

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Larson refers to Apple’s argument as a “parade of privacy horribles, culminating in the end of technological security,” such as Apple insinuating the govement could use the technology Apple creates as a springboard to “build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records and financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.”

“But this far overstates the scope of the Unites States’ request. This case poses no threat to individual privacy rights, and indeed, involves no intrusion to any cognizable privacy right at all,” according to the brief.

Larson argues that Apple engaged in hyperbole, and that the case’s facts are nearly identical to the owner of a computer operating system losing the password for the system and calling technical support to get the password changed or reinstalling the operating system.

Larson said in the brief the debates regarding privacy, encryption, and the balance between the needs of user security and the needs of law enforcement are weighty ones that need to be settled by Congress and the state legislatures.

“This court, however, faces a different set of issues and should not be led astray by Apple’s grandstanding,” the brief states.

The Califoia State Sheriff’s Association, Police Chiefs’ Association and Peace Officers’ Association argue that Apple’s fear of potential future security breaches is “simply speculation.” The order is limited to this iPhone and could not be applied to items that were not seized during this investigation, the associations argue.

The govement’s seizure and attempted search of the iPhone has complied with the Fourth Amendment. The county has given permission to law enforcement and Apple to search the phone, according to the brief.

“The order does not compel Apple to tu over the methods it uses for disabling the auto-erase function to the govement,” according to the brief. “Nor does the order actually compel Apple to keep or otherwise maintain the program that it creates to disable the auto-erase function. Apple would be free to destroy or otherwise discard any code that it creates to comply with this order.”

If Apple retains the program, any potential breach of security would not be attributed to the govement, according to the brief.

The associations also argue that the order does not violate the First Amendment because it does not compel Apple to engage in protected speech.

Staff Writer Sandra Emerson contributed to this report.

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