Rival social media firms Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) have teamed up to support fellow giant Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its bid to stop the FBI’s attempts to reduce its encryption.
Two weeks ago, the FBI called Apple’s headquarters to ask for its help in hacking an iPhone but the company said no.
This week, it asked to hack the phone of one of the killers in the December mass shooting in San Bernadino, but again was rebuffed by the tech giant.
Now Apple finds itself in a legal battle to protect its code, which is covered by the US’s free-speech law, while government policy makers want to weaken its encryption to help with investigations.
On Tuesday the US District Court in Los Angeles ruled that Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to investigators seeking to unlock the data on the phone, including bypassing the passcode protection function so they can attempt an unlimited number of password guesses.
Others have been quick to back Apple’s stance, with Twitter and Facebook saying they will “stand with Apple” and “aggressively fight” the FBI’s attempts to access the encrypted information.
“We condemn terrorism and have total solidarity with victims of terror. Those who seek to praise, promote, or plan terrorist acts have no place on our services,” Facebook said in a statement.
“However, we will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems.”
Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Apple’s biggest rival Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), wrote on Wednesday that “requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data ... could be a troubling precedent”.
It comes as Apple has been forced to apologise to its iPhone customers after complaints that third party services were disabling the phones.
An ‘Error 53’ message was making the phones useless after fake home buttons were replaced during routine servicing.
In a statement, Apple said that "error 53" occurs when a device fails a standard security test designed to ensure that the Touch ID fingerprint scanner is working correctly.
The firm has released a software update to fix the error.