Apple has argued that the government is asking for a “back door” for exploitation.

By Dileep Thekkethil

It seems like the US federal agency will have more trouble making the tech giants like Google, Facebook and Snapchat toe their line as these companies are planning to tighten the data encryption of their services, creating more headache to the Obama administration.

The US government is currently in a faceoff with Apple as the latter didn’t budge to the agency’s request to unlock an iPhone used by an attacker in a mass shooting.

According to reports, WhatsApp, the world’s most popular instant messaging service owned by Facebook, will roll out a new set of encryption update for its voice calls in addition to the privacy features.

On the other hand, the search engine giant Google has come up with a plan to further encrypt the secure emails sent by its users.

The world’s largest social media website, Facebook is also secretly working on better ways to secure the messages sent through Messenger service.

In the meanwhile, Snapchat, video messaging application is also rumoured to be working on a more secure messaging system.

Apple, which is expected to appear in a federal court in California on March 22 to fight the order, has accused the US Department of Justice (DoJ) of trying to “smear” the company with “desperate” and “unsubstantiated” claims.

It followed the Justice Department’s latest court filing over its demand that Apple creates software to unlock an iPhone used by an attacker in a mass shooting last year, BBC reported.

The department said that Apple’s stance was “corrosive” of institutions trying to protect “liberty and rights”.

It also claims Apple helped the Chinese government with iPhone security.

Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell said: “The tone of the brief reads like an indictment.”

He said: “Everybody should beware because it seems like disagreeing with the Department of Justice means you must be evil and anti-American, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Prosecutors claim Apple’s own data shows that China demanded information from Apple regarding more than 4,000 iPhones in the first half of 2015, and Apple produced data 74 percent of the time.

But Sewell said the new filing relies on thinly sourced reports to inaccurately suggest that Apple had colluded with the Chinese government to undermine iPhone buyers’ security.

The US government has been fighting Apple over access to information on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, Rizwan Farook, in December. Apple says the demands violate the company’s rights.

The Department of Justice claimed in its court filing that Apple had attacked the FBI investigation as “shoddy”, and tried to portray itself as a “guardian of Americans’ privacy”.

This “rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: The courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government,” the DoJ said.

In February, the FBI obtained a court order to force Apple to write new software that would allow the government to break into the phone. The FBI wants the software to bypass auto-erase functions on the phone.

Apple has argued that the government is asking for a “back door” that could be exploited by the government and criminals.

With agency inputs