WHILE it is now absolutely clear that the world could not function without millions of mainframe computers, it is equally true that everyday life for people in advanced societies would be insupportable without a smartphone. This is particularly true in the Kingdom where, these days, the ownership of two smartphones is not uncommon.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that many people keep their lives on their cellphones. Everything from important business messages to sensitive personal details are contained in that small block of metal, plastic and glass. For those who remember the clunky early cellphones with their limited ability to do even the one thing that they should, which was make calls, the massive functionality of the modern smartphone is still a little mind-boggling.
With personal computers, protection from viruses and outside intrusion is normal. Most machines are sold with some sort of protection software. Wise users will install extra programs to try and lock out snoopers or malware. Not so with cellphones. Their signals are easily intercepted. That is why they are encrypted. But if a mobile phone falls into someone else’s hands, depending on the manufacturer, its sensitive contents can only be read with varying degrees of difficulty.
The Apple iPhone is a device that the firm boasts comes with a very high degree of inbuilt security. The bad guys cannot get into it. But what if the phone is actually owned by a bad guy and the good guys want to get in? This is the issue that arose when the US FBI wanted to read the contents of the iPhone of slain Daesh (so-called IS) killer Syed Farook who murdered 14 people in California last December. It asked Apple to unlock the cellphone but the computer giant refused. The US Justice Department launched a court action to force it to comply but the case has now been dropped since FBI technicians and outside contractors, possibly Israeli, managed to break into the device themselves.
But was Apple right to refuse to help in a terrorism case where other lives might have been in imminent danger? Apple claimed that even it was not able to break into one of its phones. This was patent nonsense. If it had engineered such strong security, it knew perfectly well how to “un-engineer” it. Yet it was prepared to frustrate the legitimate demands of law enforcers. It is not hard to work out why. At stake were many billions of dollars-worth of new cellphone sales. To have admitted that it could mess with its customers’ devices could have seriously affected the company’s commercial fortunes.
Yet it is widely accepted that personal computers, even with prophylactic software, are vulnerable to intrusions thanks to the use of supercomputers, which have little difficulty in cracking security codes and encryption. This has not stopped the sale of such computers. Why therefore should the rest of Silicon Valley have sprung so vigorously to the defense of Apple in this case?
The answer of course is that home computers are not as “personal” as smartphones. Though they may contain much private information, they are turned off at the end of the day. A smartphone is hardly ever shut down. It is part of people’s lives. It lives in their pockets. It brings them friends and business colleagues at any time of day or night. The idea that a malign snooper could be so physically close to a person is alarming.
