A proposed California bill that would require smartphone manufacturers to be able to decrypt a customer’s smartphone if that smartphone is sold or purchased in the state has been introduced by California assembly member Jim Cooper (D-9th).
If successfully enacted into law, Assembly Bill No. 1681 could hold smartphone manufacturers liable by the California Attorney General or any district attorney if a way of decrypting the device isn’t offered. The penalty for those sales could be up to $2,500 per smartphone sold.
As of iOS 8, iPhones and iPads cannot be decrypted by Apple. Apple has made its encryption policy well known, and even recently resisted unlocking an older device in a court case regarding a seized iPhone despite the request coming from the US Department of Justice.
“Here's the situation is on your smartphone today, on your iPhone, there's likely health information, there's financial information. There are intimate conversations with your family, or your co-workers. There's probably business secrets and you should have the ability to protect it,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said to Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes. “And the only way we know how to do that, is to encrypt it. Why is that? It's because if there's a way to get in, then somebody will find the way in. There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a backdoor in, that backdoor's for everybody, for good guys and bad guys.”
California isn’t the only place where Apple may find itself in hot water over its stance on encryption if local legislators have their way. The U.K. is looking into implementing similar legislation, called the Investigatory Powers Bill, and the California bill happens to be very similar to be a bill recently re-introduced into the lower house of the New York State Legislature.
“Smartphone companies benefit immeasurably from the laws protecting intellectual property, as well as from extensive federal regulation,” Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), the New York bill’s author, wrote in the bill’s written purpose. “There is no reason criminals should also benefit, and they will, as people will be defrauded or threatened, and terrorists will use these encrypted devices to plot their next attack over FaceTime. The safety of the citizenry calls for a legislative solution, and a solution is easily at hand”
