Plan B Forum

SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTING: Trump urges boycott of Apple until it unlocks shooter's iPhone

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Myrtle Beach Sports Center on Feb. 19, 2016 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Myrtle Beach Sports Center on Feb. 19, 2016 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Donald Trump escalated his attack on Apple Inc. on the final day of campaigning before the Republican primary in South Carolina, calling for a boycott until Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook honors a court order to unlock a terrorist's iPhone.

"Boycott Apple until they give up the information," Trump said at a rally in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. "The phone is owned by the government... Tim Cook is looking to do a big number probably to show how liberal he is. Apple should give up."

The billionaire's call to action followed an interview with Bloomberg in which he offered harsh words for Cook.

"Tim Cook is living in the world of the make believe," Trump said Friday in a telephone interview. "I would come down so hard on him -- you have no idea -- his head would be spinning all of the way back to Silicon Valley."

Apple's fight with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to mobile devices escalated this week when a court ordered the company to help federal law enforcement officers unlock a phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in a deadly Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California.

In an open letter posted on the company's website, Cook described the request as an “unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers” and called for a public debate. The company vowed to fight the order.

Several Silicon Valley companies, including executives from Google and Twitter, rallied to Apple's side. Reform Government Surveillance, a group representing companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc., issued a statement on Wednesday reiterating that, while it’s “extremely important” to deter crime and terrorism, no company should be required to build backdoors to their own technology.

"I think Tim Cook is totally out of line and I think the government should come down on Tim Cook very, very hard," Trump said in the interview Friday. "I think it's a disgrace what he is doing, we're talking about lives, potentially thousands of lives, and we should find out who else was involved in the plot where 14 people were killed."

But that was before Trump announced his call to boycott the company, which he said was a spur of the moment decision as he spoke to supporters in Pawleys Island.

"OK -- what I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such a time as they give that security number," Trump said. "How do you like that? I just thought of it. Boycott Apple."

write software that disables the automatic security function that wipes all the data from the phone after a number of failed attempts to login

Lord Jim wrote: How can it be that a private company, (even one as wealthy as Apple...though somewhat less wealthy than it has been...have you looked at what's happened to its stock price recently?) can devise an encryption code so sophisticated that the United States government, with all its resources...(which are a bit more than those available to Apple) can't crack it on its own?

If US government agents had the ability to break encryption codes, they would have open access to all computers in the world and nothing could be kept secret from them.

So here is my offer to the FBI. I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team. We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks. If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.

If you doubt my credentials, Google "cybersecurity legend" and see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million.

Lord Jim wrote:Joe, it's attitudes like yours that are making Donald Trump popular...

If he can do what he claims he can do, encryption isn't as secure as we've been led to believe.

Econoline wrote:SG/BP - I hadn't heard that story (about the password having been changed by some local law enforcement person). Do you have a source for it?