French Parliament Rejects Fines on Apple Over Refusal to Hack Phones

The French parliament voted on Thursday against an amendment imposing a 2-million-euro ($2.2mln) fine on phone makers that refuse to hack cellphones on police request, after Apple defied a court ruling in a San Bernardino shooting case, a French lawmaker told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The parliament voted 12-11 against the amendment. Access to a private cellphone may only be granted in a court proceeding dealing with terrorist activities.

"Today we voted on the amendment to a bill aimed at strengthening the government’s ability to fight terrorism that would impose up to 2 million euro fine on Apple or any other phone company each time the business refused to unlock an iPhone in France," Nicolas Dhuicq, a lawmaker at the the French National Assembly, said.

Dhuicq, who is also a member of the French legislative defense commission, said the parliament voted 12-11 against the amendment. Access to a private cellphone may only be granted in a court proceeding dealing with terrorist activities, he said, adding that the bill sought to balance security and privacy.

This comes after US tech company Apple appealed a Californian court ruling that it help the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) access the phone of Rizwan Farook, a US-born man who took his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik on a shooting spree at San Bernardino’s Inland Regional Center in December, killing 14 people.

Apple argues that federal investigators want it to build a permanent backdoor into its products, a software tool that can break the encryption system which protects personal data on every iPhone, although the FBI denied this.

John McAfee, an acclaimed IT expert and the developer of the first antivirus program, saind in an interview with the RT television channel earlier this week that the FBI should stop pretending it was not seeking a tool to decrypt all iPhones and just admit it wanted to spy on Americans.