John Oliver used a good portion of last night’s Last Week Tonight to discuss a very important topic to many Americans: encryption. In recent months, due to the San Bernardino iPhone case, encryption has become an even more highly talked about and debated issue than it ever has been before, as the FBI and Apple clash over their ability to unlock one of the terrorist’s iPhones and obtain data that, at this time, remains encrypted. And while there are some people out there on both sides trying to make this seem like a simple, easy-to-fix problem, as Oliver explains, it’s much more complicated than that.
So why can’t Apple just create a program, a master key of sorts, to help the FBI unlock this terrorist’s iPhone? Well, Apple’s main concern isn’t about what could happen in this case but what could happen down the line. Despite some people in the government claiming that this would be a “one-time thing,” that Apple would never be asked to bypass their own encryption software again, the company understandably believes that won’t be the case; if a precedent is set in the San Bernardino case, and Apple helps to unlock the phone, police and government agencies will turn to the company asking for help in hundreds of other cases that require this type of technology.
But the problem isn’t even with Apple having to help law enforcement. It’s about the potential risk that comes with creating a “master key” like this one, that could unlock hundreds of millions of encrypted phones and become a dangerous tool if it falls into the hands of the wrong person.
When it comes to this topic, Oliver openly admits his bias, stating how he stands behind Apple in this case. However, the Last Week Tonight host isn’t trying to make everyone else on the other side of this argument feel dumb or wrong. Instead, what he’s really try to make everyone do is realize how complicated this issue is, just like Senator Lindsey Graham did, as he went from calling the whole ordeal “stupid” to acknowledging the complexity of the situation.
Watch John Oliver discuss the case, and the idea of encryption as a whole, in the segment below from last night’s Last Week Tonight:
[Photo via YouTube]
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