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Mother of San Bernardino victim backs Apple, says right to privacy 'makes America great'

The makeshift memorial which appeared in San Bernardino following the shooting.

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Carole Adams — whose son Robert was killed in the San Bernardino attack last year — has spoken out in support of Apple's position on encryption, saying the company "is definitely within their rights to protect the privacy of all Americans."

"This is what separates us from communism, isn't it?" Adams told the New York Post. "The fact we have the right to privacy."

"This is what makes America great to begin with, that we abide by a constitution that gives us the right of privacy, the right to bear arms, and the right to vote," she added.

Adams appears to be in the minority among those connected to the shooting. A number of victims and their families have announced plans to file a legal brief in support of the FBI.

"They were targeted by terrorists, and they need to know why, how this could happen," an attorney representing those victims said.

The battle between Apple and the FBI — in which the bureau is asking Apple to create a special, backdoored version of iOS for use in unlocking the shooters' iPhone 5c — has spilled over from the courtroom to the court of public opinion. A war of words has broken out, led by Apple CEO Tim Cook and FBI director James Comey, in which each side is working to paint the other as unreasonable.

"Fourteen people were slaughtered and many more had their lives and bodies ruined. We owe them a thorough and professional investigation under law. That's what this is," Comey wrote in a letter released Sunday.

"This case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation, so when we received the government's order we knew we had to speak out," Cook shot back in an internal email on Monday. "At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people, and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone's civil liberties."



29 Comments

jungmark 13 Years · 6927 comments

It's a shame that she even had to speak up due to her loss, however I'm glad she saw through the govt power grab. 

tzeshan 14 Years · 2350 comments

Why the other FBI supporters choose to be anonymous?  Apparently it is unAmerican to suppress privacy.  

maestro64 19 Years · 5029 comments

As far as I have seen no one has presented any evidence or data these two people were terrorist, The government has used this a catch all phase to lump anyone who does things which does not agree with what our government deems in their best interest.

These two are not terrorist, they were bad people who parent failed to raise them properly and were hell bent on destruction, and they succeeded. This was someone who had a beef with people they worked with and decide to take out their vengeance on those people, they were not part of any group or organization which was plotting against the LA country Social Worker group.

In typical fashion, the victims want answers to questions which do not exist, they want someone to say these bad people did this because of something specific like there were terrorist verse they were bad people who hated them for whatever their personal reasons.

This is no different than the kid in Connecticut, who kills all those kid and with no reason, other than he had serious issues. So everyone blames the gun since it had to be the guns fault. So these people are blaming the iphone for there reason for not having answers.