Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Charlie Rose 20160225 : vimarsana.

I am pleased to have him on this program. Thank you for doing this. Ted it is my pleasure. Charlie where do we stand this evening on the legal issues . Ted a magistrate judge in San Bernardino county has asked the parties to prepare and submit briefs, and to prepare arguments as to whether or not the order the fbi is seeking here to cause apple to change the structure of the operating system is something that they will be required to do. Charlie you will make your argument . They will make theirs. This magistrate will make a ruling . Ted yes. It will be the Justice Department representing the fbi, but they work together. Papers will be submitted to the magistrate and as i understand it, as of now, there is a hearing set on march 22. Charlie next month . Ted yes. Charlie he will make a ruling . Ted it is a she. She will presumably make a ruling. That ruling would be appealable to a federal judge. Appeals code follows from that. Depending on who prevails. I charlie ipad mini of i have had many conversations about this. They say they want a one time only fix by apple, which they are capable of doing, and that is it. They want apple to do it, apple to destroy what they do, end of story. Ted have you asked the Justice Department to tell you on camera that they were only going to ask this one time . We know that they are seeking it in other places. The same relief and other places, in other cases. Cyrus vance told you last week that he had 175 cell phones, that he wanted the same remedy. He wanted the structure of the cell phone to be changed to make it a defective device, not the device that apple designed, so they can hack into the system. This is potentially happening everywhere. While the Justice Department is saying, we only want to break the rules this one time, it is simply not true. It would set a precedent that could happen anywhere, anytime. Charlie but me tell you what they have said to me. They have said that they want this one time only, and they are perfectly prepared for the process to go forward. Make an exception in this one case because of the high security reasons, and let the process go forward to the Supreme Court if necessary. Then let the ruling stand. Allow them this one time to make this case for this one cell phone, then after the ruling, decide all the other cases that may come up from cy vance and others around the country. Ted we know that they are trying the same device and mechanism in other places in the country. They are asking the same thing. If it is true that they are willing to reseed from that and say they are not willing to pursue this further until there is a definitive ruling from the United States Supreme Court, that would be one thing. But they are also saying the Justice Department, the fbi, i respect these people in our. I know what they are trying to do and i respect them for trying to do it but we have to stand up for constitutional principles. If they are willing to say that they are willing to stop at this one situation and wait for a definitive ruling, that would be another thing. I would like to see them say that in writing to the judge in San Bernardino. Charlie you have never heard that from anybody on the side of the fbi, Law Enforcement, or Justice Department . That they would be willing to consider that . Ted i have never heard that from them. I have heard them say just this once. We know that if they are successful here in this court, this same thing could be done anywhere. The legal principle, if they can use something called the all writs act, without a statute that often arises a court order for apple to redesign its that authorizes the court order for apple to redesign its software, that is a big step. They seem to want to do this everywhere. We are hearing but they are looking for this case to set a precedent, but also the same result in other places. They should put it in writing, file it with the federal court, have the Justice Department sign it, and say that they are waiting for a definitive ruling from the United States Supreme Court. That would be another thing. We can argue about the legal merits in court. Charlie you are not denying they could do this one phone and it would not affect anyone elses phone anywhere in the world . Ted i am denying that. Charlie and will not allow that to be put on any other phone anywhere else and apple can keep their secrets and do everything they want to do. It will have no effect. Ted you are accepting the words for it. What about the District Attorney in milwaukee . Is he bound by what the Justice Department says . Charlie he would be bound by whatever the Supreme Court considers, or the last court of final decision is, what their decision is. Ted sure. If you are talking about and understanding that everybody waits until the United States a Supreme Court issues a definitive ruling, that is not what they have been saying, i would be interested to hear that, but apple certainly will await the decision from the United States Supreme Court provided that the iphone is not broken and damaged and accessed in the meantime. Charlie are there no circumstances in which apple would allow, no matter what protections given to them, no circumstances in which apple will allow itself to enter this phone on National Security grounds . Not one signal exception . One single exception. Ted i cannot imagine all of the exceptions you might have in your mind, but rather this. But remember this. They are asking apple, a private company, to redesign their system. If they told you to redesign your program or the cameras that you use so we can listen in to somebody, put your talent and energy to work to recreate a system so that the government will have access to what you do, you would be stunned by the. This is unprecedented. The government does not have the right to conscript private citizens to invent an operating system for a cell phone anymore than they could make you do a program on pbs, or ask an artist to sing a song or write a poem. This is a constitutional government, they do not have the right to do that kind of thing. Except under perhaps exceptional circumstances. They were going to ask congress for a change in the law, they had legislation that was approved by the Justice Department. They pulled it. For some reason, they did not Want Congress to consider this issue and it should. Congress should be weighing in. Charlie why do you think they pulled . Ted i dont know. I think they may have been worried about the conditions that Congress Might put on that authority. That is what we do in this country. We have our elected representatives decide the pros and cons. You started by saying this is privacy versus security. This is security versus security. The security of all those people who entrusted these cell phones with their private information. Charlie if you insist that what theyre asking apple to do is to change every single iphone going forward. Ted what we know that they want to do is to develop a Different Program with respect to this particular iphone, but that program if it were applied to this iphone could be used in any other circumstances. Someone could hack it, someone could steal it, there is no stopping another Law Enforcement official from seeking the same thing. No other official the District Attorney in phoenix does not have to wait for the Supreme Court to go into a court in phoenix to get the same relief. Charlie so you say there is no way to separate this one phone from the others . Of course. Ted if you develop a code, a Computer System that will break into this phone, whatever you have done there you can do for any other phone. Charlie you disagree with emily pierce who told bloomberg business, the judges order and our requests were narrowly tailored to this particular phone. Ted they wrote it that way, but the principle they are trying to accomplish is to change the structure of the phone. Use your engineers to write code in such a way that you will damage and destroy the existing feature of the phone that keeps people hacking into it. They are saying, break your principles for this one case and we will never ask again. We dont believe it. They have said in that same article in the New York Times that we are also interested in this because it is applicable elsewhere. They mention a case and that in baton rouge, louisiana. That is one case. They want to use apple engineers to create a different product than apple created. They want to use that different product to disable and make less effective the product that apple has got on the market. Charlie you think the government is trying to mislead the American Public . Ted Everybody Knows that the government files an application and then a second application. They are engaged in a Public Relations war. They want the American People to accept what they are asking. Again i say, i respect director komi and the people in the director comey, and the people in the Justice Department. What they want is good, but they have to comply with the constitution when they do it. If they would go back to congress and seek the authority they were attempting to seek, or as director comey said, we want the American People to debate this. We are the elected representatives. Charlie let me ask you hard questions and you will tell me how to handle it . Ted the once you have been asking are easy . Charlie [laughter] what if there is information in that phone linking to other people planning acts of terrorism against the United States . What is your answer to other people who are concerned about that . If your answer is about Civil Liberties, lay it out how it is applied here and not in other cases. Ted in the first place, what terrorists want to do is destroy the american system. They want to hurt our people and our principles. They do not like the principles that respect equality for women, and all people, equality of religion. Charlie what principle is at stake here . Ted everything is at stake. The constitution that protects privacy, intimacy, and individual rights. If it can be violated here, it can be violated anywhere. If we surrender constitutional principles, they have achieved victory. Everyone of us has to stand up for those principles. Charlie lets talk about it. Suppose you were at the fbi, and you found out that there were bank records on the part of these terrorists, now dead. There were bank records you wanted access to, in the custody of a private bank, because you wanted to know how they spent their money and who they were in a financial transaction with. Would you object to giving the government access to those financial records . Ted there is a Fourth Amendment of the constitution that says searches must be reasonable, and pursuant to a warrant. Charlie suppose the judge says it is a reasonable search . Ted if it is, people have to comply with that. But we have yet to decide that here. This is not a search for bank records. This is an effort by the government to change the iphone. Charlie they want to do it for the same reason that they want to search bank records. Ted thats right. If they wanted to kill somebody to get through those records, we would say that its unconstitutional. It cannot be done. Simply because they want something does not mean they can do anything to get it. If they are intending apple to put resources together to redesign the phone, they have got to get a court order to do that. They never even tried to get legislative authority to back up that court order. This is an important principle. Charlie i know and respect tim cook very much, and clearly, he is a man who believes strongly in human rights and Civil Liberties. He has gone at length to somehow say, for this company, we are very much opposed to any kind of illegal activity, especially that which threatens the National Security of United States. Some will respond to him by saying, you are asking a private company not to allow information that the government needs to prosecute criminals. End of story. Ted it is not the end of the story. What they are asking apple to do is to design a different cell phone. Design a different iphone. To take the iphone that they spent a long time crafting because people needed and wanted it, to change its designs so that it is a less effective product, a product that can protect security less than it was designed. They are asking the people at apple drop what you are doing. Go to another business, design a different iphone for us. If they can get this information from this iphone, they can get it in the next case. It is not just limited to terrorism, it could be bank robbers, counterfeiters, money launderers, or whatever. Charlie do you think the fbi carefully chose this case to make the point they want in the ongoing question . Ted that is what we are hearing that they are saying. They said this was a good case to make a test case to get that back door. Maybe we will be able to get it in court because we can say the word terrorism. We will scream the word terrorism and they will intimidate apple. They are not going to intimidate apple and if they did pick this as a test case, i respect what they are trying to accomplish. They want to get information, they want to fight terrorism or the threat of terrorism. They had not demonstrated there is anything in this phone that they know about, or have a strong suspicion for. They want to overturn every stone, and i respect them for wanting to do that, but they have got to respect that apple is standing up for constitutional principles. Charlie or its business model. Ted that is so unfair. That is what they say, but thats why i have made such a point of saying, we respect the Law Enforcement people and their motives. They are not according equivalent respect to apple, and the trust of its tens of millions of people that have trusted apple and the integrity of its product. Dont talk about business model. This is a relationship between people who trusted apple to provide them with a product and did not suspect that apple would simply disable that product and make it into Something Else without testing the legal principles in court. Charlie tim cook has said to me on 60 minutes, as you know, we have encrypted this because we dont want to have any access to this phone. We want people in china to know that we dont have access we do not even know the encryption code. Thats what they have said and they have said, that separates us. We sell a product. We are not like another company in Silicon Valley who are selling information about people to clients who want to use it for advertising purposes. That has been one of the points that tim cook is made, time after time. Ted of course. That is what he has said. You imagine yourself as a person in china. You are a dissident. You want to communicate with other dissidents. You know that if the government gets a hold of that information, you are dead or in prison. That is those individuals in china, or india, or some other place. Maybe a place in the middle east were someone is a day individual gay individual knowing he can be punished or flog for being who he is or flogged for being who he is, he says i need the ability to communicate knowing that it will remain private. Apple designed that product for him. Apple has a responsibility to those individuals, many of whom could be in serious peril of their lives and liberty. Charlie at the same time that you say that, people stepped forward and say to have a commitment to people being periled in their lives because information that should be available to Law Enforcement is not. Ted i was in the Justice Department on september 11. I participated in the development of the Legal Authority that the government was seeking from congress and the courts to fight terrorism. We were sensitive to the fact that we want to fight terrorism, but we want to preserve american fundamental constitutional liberties. There is a balance there. This government must respect it just as much as apple does. Charlie this had to do with torture . Ted i am talking about the u. S. Patriot act and systems of attempting to find out information from telephone calls. The patriot act is something that Everybody Knows about. Congress debated it and decided what the balance would be. They said that under certain situations applications for information from phones would have to go to the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, under a proper warrant, need to be signed by the attorney general and director of the cia. Built in protections for Civil Liberties. The point is that there must be a balance there and we have to respect it unless we want to give up what we stand for for the last 230 years. A constitutional democracy that protects individual liberties and the right to privacy. Charlie taking you away from being apples lawyer and looking at the experience you have had and life experiences, what is the way out of this . One way out is for congress to d