New York’s criminal element loves Apple’s uncrackable iPhones, calling them a “gift from God,” the NYPD’s counterterrorism chief said on Sunday.
“I still don’t know what made [Apple] . . . decide to actually design a system that made them not able to aid the police,” John Miller griped to John Catsimatidis on his “Cats Roundtable” AM 970 radio show.
“Because . . . then you are actually providing aid to the kidnappers, robbers and murderers who have actually been recorded on the telephones in Rikers Island telling their compatriots on the
outside, ‘You gotta get iOS 8. It’s a gift from God’ — and that’s a quote — ‘because the cops can’t crack it.’ ”
Officials said the recorded jailhouse statement, made by a person involved in an ongoing sex-crime investigation, shows that criminals are aware of the difficulties faced by law enforcement in
trying to gain access to the tech giant’s super secure devices.
“It was a conversation that was just so obviously on point that it was kind of startling and, I think, super-relevant,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told The Post. “I was surprised that it was being talked about so obviously and so openly.”
Vance said his office’s cyber lab has more than 200 iPhones equipped with the uncrackable iOS 8 operating system.
But even with a search warrant, the phones can’t be accessed because Apple now intentionally designs its devices so there is no way around encryption.
“If an individual in Rikers Island is clearly comprehending that this operating system makes his communications with his co-criminals unreachable, that tells you a lot,” Vance said.
Apple has come under fire for refusing to abide by a recent court order requiring the company to write new software and disable password protection on the phone of San Bernardino, Calif.,
shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, who, along with his wife, killed 14 people in December.
Apple says that a change in its operating system would create a dangerous precedent and threaten customer security.
“This is what is happening and the question really is, where’s the balance that’s going to be drawn here?” Vance said. “We’ve got to be able to do our job. We’ve got to be able to protect people.”