Google Has Also Been Ordered to Help Unlock Phones
30 March 2016 - 2:40PM
Dow Jones News
WASHINGTON—Google has been repeatedly ordered to help federal
agents open cellphones, according to court records in seven states
that show Apple Inc. isn't the only company facing government
demands at the center of a fierce debate over privacy and
security.
The American Civil Liberties Union found 63 instances where the
government sought a court order under a 1789 law called the All
Writs Act to compel Apple and Google to help them access data on
locked phones.
The outcome of those cases aren't clear. However, federal
prosecutors have said until late last year, when Apple began
resisting such efforts, it was routine for judges to approve such
requests from federal prosecutors. And those requests aren't a new
phenomenon—the cases stretch back to 2008.
Details of the cases come days after the Justice Department
announced it cracked into a terrorist's cellphone, ending a
high-profile court battle over whether Apple can be forced by a
court to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation bypass the
phone's passcode security system.
The overall numbers aren't surprising, since prosecutors have
previously said Apple provided assistance in such cases more than
70 times. Most, but not all, of the 63 cases identified by the ACLU
involve Apple. But the figures offer the first accounting of how
the government has also sought such orders for Google to help
investigators pull data off locked smartphones, typically by having
the company reset the devices' passwords.
"We carefully scrutinize subpoenas and court orders to make sure
they meet both the letter and spirit of the law," a Google
spokesman said. "However, we've never received an All Writs Act
order like the one Apple recently fought that demands we build new
tools that actively compromise our products' security.... We would
strongly object to such an order."
The Justice Department has defended the practice of getting
court orders to compel assistance from technology companies as a
routine and necessary part of law enforcement work when there is no
other way for agents to access a suspect's phone that might hold
important criminal evidence. Privacy groups argue the government is
misusing an outdated law to claim authority not granted by
Congress.
A court filing last month from Apple indicated there were at
least a dozen active cases in which the Justice Department was
pursuing similar orders involving Apple.
In one of the Google cases, a 2015 drug investigation in
California, prosecutors got a court order compelling Google to
provide assistance in getting data from an Alcatel cellphone and a
Kyocera cellphone, both of which were using Google's Android
operating system, according to court records.
The ACLU found Google was also the subject of All Writs Act
cases in Alabama, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon
and South Dakota.
Some of the court records show judges signed court orders
compelling Google to help investigators, though the records don't
indicate whether Google complied. In one such case, a 2015 child
pornography investigation in Sacramento, Calif., Google was ordered
to reset the password of a Samsung telephone so investigators could
search its contents. Other court dockets are unclear as to the
outcome of the prosecutors' request.
The technical issues are different for Alphabet Inc.'s Google
than for Apple, partly because Google makes the Android cellphone
operating system, but that system runs on phones manufactured by
others, while Apple makes both phones and their operating
software.
The Google cases involve investigations by the FBI, the Secret
Service, the Homeland Security Department, the Drug Enforcement
Administration and the Bureau of Land Management.
Apple's disputed with the Justice Department in the terrorism
case centered on the work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who along
with his wife killed 14 people and injured 22 others in a Dec. 2
attack on a holiday party of San Bernardino, Calif., county
employees.
Just as the two sides were due to face off in court last week,
federal officials said they had found a new potential technique to
get data from the phone without Apple's help. On Monday, the
Justice Department announced the method had worked and they were
dropping the case against Apple.
The larger legal issue of privacy and security in the digital
age remain unresolved, awaiting the next courtroom standoff on the
issue. The focus of that fight may now shift to Brooklyn, N.Y.,
where a federal magistrate judge recently ruled that the Justice
Department didn't have the legal authority to force Apple to help
them open an iPhone seized in a drug case.
The Justice Department has asked a higher judge to review that
finding, and more court filings are expected in that case in coming
weeks.
Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 30, 2016 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)
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