1. Police say criminals love iPhones and call the encryption a ‘gift from God’
2. FBI has accessed San Bernardino terrorist’s phone without Apple’s help
3. Federal officials ponder sharing how to unlock iPhone with local agencies
4. FBI apparently paid more than $1 million to crack the San Bernardino terrorist iPhone

Apple is right to fight the FBI’s efforts to force it to create a program to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. Agreeing to make that program would create a terrible precedent and possibly even worse unintended consequences.

“A recent court order against Apple compels the company to help the FBI gain access to a locked iPhone 5C used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook,” The Heritage Foundation’s David Inserra contends. “While Apple has helped law enforcement access data on other iPhones on at least 70 other occasions, new security protections make it increasingly difficult to do so with newer iPhones like Farook’s. This is because Apple, in order to strengthen the security of its devices, designed new iPhones with encryption that no one can break (including Apple itself). This includes passcodes that only the user knows.”

To get around those protections, Apple would have to write a new program to break the phone’s elaborate encryption. Here’s why that’s a mistake.

“Encryption is a great thing for ordinary consumers,” Inserra said. “Everything on your phone (emails, texts, health or credit information, photos, etc.) is secure on an iPhone unless your passcode is used.”

Encryption can be used for nefarious purposes, he admits. But so can anti-encryption technology, programs and precedents.

“If the U.S. can force Apple to do this, other countries, including less friendly countries, will start demanding that phone companies also provide them with a way around the encryption, and this workaround will not be used for good in some countries,” he said. “Second, what happens if this new passcode-cracking software falls into the wrong hands? This software (and subsequent versions for newer iPhones or other devices) could be used to disable protections on many devices. Millions of devices go from being very secure to very vulnerable. Consumer cyber-security and privacy would take a huge blow, as would the reputation of Apple and other tech companies.”

The security of the information on your cellphone is important, particularly in light of just how much of it there is.

As Chris Strohm wrote for Bloomberg, “Your phone knows more about you than you think. It knows where you’ve been and who you were with, the birthday gift you bought your mother and who you plan to vote for. … From pre-installed apps that count your steps to saved passwords for banking accounts and social media, smartphones have evolved from devices that make calls into digital repositories for the most intimate details of life.”

Now, Apple is right to fight the FBI on creating a new program. But that doesn’t mean Apple need not help the FBI regarding the San Bernardino shooting. There are ways to access the information, without setting precedent or creating a program that could eventually be misused.

Tech blogger Dan Guido wrote, “I believe it is technically feasible for Apple to comply with all of the FBI’s requests in this case.”

Apple could crack the security, on its own, and share the information with the FBI.

Apple should help, but not submit to the FBI’s demand.