The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger

For the leader of one of the most successful companies on the planet, larger than some European economies, it was a remarkable accusation. Cook was charging an administration that treasured its reputation as a progressive force for civil rights with seeking to undermine a core constitutional principle about individual freedom. With Apple and the FBI at a standoff, Obama dispatched some of his senior intelligence officials to Silicon Valley to talk Cook off the ceiling and look anew for a compromise. Cook wasn’t interested. Though he could not yet reveal it publicly, the FBI’s demand that Apple break into the San Bernardino phone was just one of four thousand law-enforcement requests to the company in the second half of 2015. Comey wasn’t about to back down; he told aides that the publicity around the San Bernardino case would, if anything, remind criminals, child pornographers, and terrorists to use encryption. This was the moment to settle the encryption wars, he said, once and for all.