The Global Butterfly Effect of a Single iPhone

Weathermen, a butterfly, an iPhone, and the FBI. Your first thought may be: That’s an odd combination. But think again.

Let’s start with weathermen and the butterfly. Originally coined by meteorologists, the term “Butterfly Effect” suggested that a tiny event, as insignificant as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, might have a ripple effect that eventually swells and grows into a hurricane.

In the case of iPhones and the FBI, the flutter of the butterfly’s wing may be a small bit of benign-seeming code. And the hurricane? That’s just the point. Who really knows. 

Our story starts with an iPhone that belonged to the San Bernardino shooters. The FBI has asked Apple to write a bit of code that will fool the iPhone into accepting a software update, which will disable certain security features and, in turn, enable the FBI to guess the phone’s four-digit passcode. Apple has so far refused the request, and this week a federal court in southern California will begin to consider the question.

Apple says that if they grant the FBI’s request in this single instance, it will be impossible to refuse similar requests in the future, thus undermining customers’ faith in the security of their electronic devices. The American judicial system operates on the basis of precedent, so a ruling by the federal court in the FBI’s favor will likely lead … well, that’s just the problem. No one knows where this Butterfly Effect will lead.

When the U.S. Government possesses a potential digital “back door” into every phone, can anyone doubt that hackers, criminals, and other governments will soon possess this back door, too?  As we’ve learned from the NSA scandal, in the world of technology, national borders no longer exist. This isn’t just a national debate. As the ripples from this butterfly effect grow and swell, it will quickly become a global issue. 

It took two world wars for Europeans to finally realize what it means to surrender privacy. In the aftermath of the second world war, countries like Germany spearheaded some of the toughest privacy laws in the world. As a result of those laws, many databases cannot be merged. Compare that with the case of Australia, where a loan rejection by one bank is reported, almost instantly, to every other bank in the country; as a result, an ordinary citizen may be unable to secure a loan for three years. 

In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, such database integration is illegal — but it can be a difficult balancing act. Privacy that’s good for the consumer also allowed the pilot of the Germanwings jetliner that crashed in France to conceal treatment for suicidal tendencies from his employer.

In its argument that Apple should be directed to help it to gain access to this one iPhone, the FBI is depending on the All Writs Act, which was passed in 1789. The authors of the act stated general principles, but of course they could hardly imagine a world in which individuals communicated by hand-held telephones, large corporations and the NSA collected enormous amounts of Big Data, and Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the government’s data collection practices. 

The legal, moral, ethical, and commercial issues are complex, and Apple, one of the world’s most valuable brands, finds itself squeezed in the middle. According to a recent poll conducted by the New York Times, the American populace is almost evenly split on the issue.

Apple is in a lose-lose situation. If they win, preserving the security of their iPhones, they are sure to be in the spotlight when the next terrorism attack occurs. They will be accused of impeding the investigation or even abetting the terrorists. 

But if the federal court rules against Apple, the government will certainly take advantage of the precedent to force Apple to provide ever greater access to its phones. Bad actors — hackers, criminals, and unfriendly governments — will surely get hold of these back doors. The Butterfly Effect will occur, and we’ll little by little find ourselves thinking back fondly to a time when we still had a little bit of privacy.

In his dystopian book 1984, George Orwell predicted a worst-case scenario, a society in which Big Brother watches our every action and listens in on our every conversation. It might seem ironic, now, to remember that it was Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, that ran that iconic TV commercial, aired in 1984, in which one brave soul challenged Big Brother. 

Are we today witnessing the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, which will stir the air and lead us, inexorably, to a total loss of privacy?

Who would have thought that a tiny bit of code written for one iPhone might open the floodgates to such a world?