Few quotes from the net:
Even Michael Hayden, a former chief of both the CIA and the NSA — who served as the NSA's director as it conducted the controversial surveillance program that collected telephone metadata on millions of Americans — called out Comey as not shooting straight about his real intent.
"In general I oppose the government's effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey," Hayden said in an interview. "Jim would like a back door available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim's job a bit easier in some specific circumstances."
Hayden added, "when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors." If there's a back door, he said, "a lot of other people would take advantage of it."
Comey's FBI and the Obama administration are gaining some cover from the media as well, which keeps suggesting that the issue in question is whether or not "Apple should help the police to unlock a terrorist phone."
This is also absolutely untrue. Apple isn't being asked to unlock a device.
The FBI knows Apple can't unlock it, because there is no master key that exists anywhere.
What it is demanding is new software that would bypass iOS's existing security features to allow the FBI itself to guess the passcode for as long as it needed to access the device.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook called this new software a "cancer," suggesting that once unleashed, it would be impossible to control. And of course, if the U.S. federal government already has nine other requests in the queue for a security bypassing back door to get past encryption, setting a new precedent for the "Mother of All Back Doors" means that there will be a steady stream of new demands.
And if the U.S. can achieve its goals via a court order, clearly any other country Apple does business in can also demand access to the same capabilities, without even needing to establish any sort of democratically-originated legal basis in law.
