Why should iPhones be exempt ?

The FBI’s legal battle with Apple isn’t over, said L. Gordon Crovitz. The government has dropped its demand to get cooperation from Apple, now that a third party has helped the FBI bypass the security features blocking access to San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. But the larger issue hasn’t been resolved: Should smartphones be uniquely exempt from the law enforcement searches permitted by the Fourth Amendment? When it announced its new operating system to customers in 2014, Apple boasted that “unlike our competitors,” the company could not bypass the customer’s chosen passcodes, so “it’s not technically feasible to respond to government warrants.” That’s a nice way to market iPhones to people concerned about privacy—and to terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and other criminals. Every year, tech companies like Facebook and Google routinely comply with thousands of warrants and subpoenas. So do banks and traditional telecommunication companies. But Apple has arrogantly turned down hundreds of requests to help investigators get into suspected criminals’ iPhones. Why should Apple be “above the law”? The courts or Congress need to decide that question once and for all.