Bloomberg Business: Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, a partner with the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said on ABC’s “This Week” program that the order would open a “Pandora’s box” of privacy issues.
“This is not just one magistrate in San Bernardino,” said Olson, 75, whose wife died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “There are hundreds of magistrates, there are hundreds of other courts.”
In rejecting the magistrate’s decree, Apple has ignited a long-simmering battle between the tech industry and the government pitting concerns over civil liberties against the need for surveillance to fight terrorism. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump waded into the battle last week by urging people to boycott Apple products until it complied.
“This case is entirely overstated,” John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said on “This Week” after Olson’s appearance. “The giant parade of terribles,” as he described Apple’s worries over government breaches of civil liberties, “is absurd.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym ordered Apple to lend “reasonable technical assistance” to the FBI in recovering information from the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who teamed up with his wife in December to kill 14 people in San Bernardino, California.
