Newswise — Although the government regulates a vast array of product designs, iPhones are different, said an expert on product safety regulation.
In asking Apple to hack an iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, the government is arguing that mobile devices are like any other consumer product subject to oversight. Apple argues that unlocking the iPhone would raise serious privacy concerns.
Timothy Lytton, a professor of law at Georgia State University's College of Law, explains that the government’s efforts to compel Apple to create a back door for its phones implicates not health and safety concerns, but privacy—and that makes it different from other forms of product regulation, he said.
“The controversy raises interesting issues about the intersection of consumer product regulation and protections from government search and seizure in the context of a criminal investigation,” Lytton said. For example, should the phone itself be treated as a consumer product or a private space? This is only one of the issues that the courts face in addressing the controversy.
Lytton, author of the book Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts, has appeared in a number of media outlets as an expert on gun violence and lawsuits against the industry, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, MSNBC and 11 Alive as well as several public radio stations.
Read more about Timothy Lytton at law.gsu.edu/profile/timothy-d-lytton.
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