A new front in an old encryption fight.

• Author: Shackford, Scott
• Position: Follow-Up

The tension between data privacy and government intelligence gathering boiled over in February thanks to a locked iPhone the FBI claims it is unable to hack its way into.

The dispute has brought publicity to a government-waged war on encryption that goes all the way back to the dawn of the age of consumer computer technology. In the January 1981 issue of reason, Sylvia Sanders delved into the brewing battle. The National Security Agency (NSA) was attempting to manipulate patent regulations with "secrecy orders" to try to keep new encryption inventions from entering the marketplace. Sanders saw the future of digital data and warned what was coming if the NSA succeeded in keeping encryption out of consumer electronics: "Legal suppression of cryptography will only serve to drive it underground, into the hands of criminals and out of the country."

Technology has grown far more complex since the days of theTRS-8o and the dominance of IBM, but the same attitude--that government should have access to all data regardless of the impact on citizens' privacy--still drives the conflict.

The phone now in question was in the possession of Syed Rizwan Farook, a man who in December killed 14 people in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, with the help of his wife. The...