Speaking
at the South by Southwest festival in Texas on Friday, the president said he
could not comment on the legal case in which the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) is trying to force Apple to allow access to an iPhone
linked to California, shooter Rizwan Farook.
But he made
clear that despite his commitment to Americans' privacy and civil liberties, a
balance was needed to allow some government intrusion if necessary.
"If
technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where
the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there's no door at all, then
how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we solve or disrupt a
terrorist plot?" he said.
"What
mechanisms do we have available to even do simple things like tax enforcement
because if in fact you can't crack that at all, government can't get in, then
everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket."
Last month,
the FBI obtained a court order requiring Apple to write new software and take
other measures to disable passcode protection and allow access to Farook's
iPhone.
Apple, which declined to comment on Obama's
remarks on Friday, has not complied. It said the government request would
create a "back door" to phones that could be abused by criminals and
governments, and that Congress has not given the Justice Department authority
to make such a demand.
Obama's comments were his most expansive on
the subject since the dispute.
He acknowledged scepticism about the
government in the wake of the revelations about US surveillance programs by
former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.
But he pressed his point that a compromise
that respected civil liberties and protected security had to be found. That
solution would likely be a system with strong encryption and a secure
"key" that is accessible to the "smallest number of people possible"
for issues that were agreed to be important.
"Setting aside the specific case
between the FBI and Apple ... we’re going to have to make some decisions about
how do we balance these respective risks," Obama said.
"My conclusion so far is you cannot take
an absolutist view."
Adding to his argument, the president
listed airport security and stops for drunk drivers as examples of measures
that were intrusive but accepted. He also warned against "fetishising"
phones.
"This notion that somehow our data is
different and can be walled off from those other tradeoffs we make I believe is
incorrect," he said.
Top White House officials have lobbied the
industry aggressively to work with the government on the issue, which was
brought to a head by the California shootings.
The
FBI says Farook and his wife were inspired by Islamist militants when they shot
and killed 14 people on Dec 2 at a holiday party at California San Bernardino.
The couple later died in a shootout with police
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