Tech

Apple Policy: No Access to Customer Passcodes, Says Company

Amid the controversy surrounding reports that Apple refused to unlock Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s iPhone at the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) request, sources close to the matter revealed on Wednesday that no one at the multinational tech company was contacted directly in India or around the world to unlock the device. According to reports, the ED had “informally” sought Apple to assist in unlocking the iPhone. Apple, on the other hand, is adamant that it will not provide the passcode to an iOS device that is locked at the moment.

According to the company’s “Legal Process Guidelines” for governments and law enforcement outside of the US, “No, Apple does not have access to a customer’s passcode.” Emails with questions or concerns about the legal system should be sent to lawenforcement@apple.com. There was no documented correspondence between ED and Apple, according to sources.

Requests for accounts from the government, law enforcement, and business sectors are subject to Apple’s notice policy. The official company document states that Apple “will notify customers and account holders unless there is a non-disclosure order or applicable law prohibiting notice, or where Apple, based only on its reasonable belief that, in its sole judgment, providing notice might immediately put a member of the public in danger of serious damage or death, that the case involves child endangerment, or that notification is not relevant to the case’s fundamental facts,”

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To help with investigations and prosecutions, Apple objected to or challenged more than a dozen court orders in the US in 2015 and 2016. The objective was to compel the company “to use its existing capabilities to extract data like contacts, photos, and calls from locked iPhones running on operating systems iOS 7 and older.” One famous example is a 2016 court battle in which the FBI demanded that Apple unlock a “work-issued” iPhone that was found on one of the shooters in the December 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, which left 22 people injured and 14 dead. The iPhone was not unlocked by Apple. Afterward, the government dropped its lawsuit, claiming that it had used a third party’s assistance to unlock the iPhone.