Apple lists companies, organizations, law professors and others who are at your side in the dispute with the FBI

A few days ago, covering the case Apple vs. FBI, we inform you that companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo have shown Apple support in just words.

They all pledged to enter the fray as amicus curiae (in Portuguese, “friends of the court”; an expression used to designate an institution whose purpose is to provide subsidies to court decisions, offering them a better basis for relevant and high-impact issues). Because it wasn’t in those five, no.

On its website, Apple listed all the companies, organizations and people who are somehow on its side in this dispute. Below, the list:

  • 32 law professors.
  • Access Now and Wick Foundation.
  • ACT / The App association.
  • Airbnb, Atlassian, Automattic, CloudFlare, eBay, GitHub, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Mapbox, Medium, Meetup, Reddit, Square, Squarespace, Twilio, Twitter and Wickr.
  • American Union for Civil Liberties.
  • American Union for Civil Liberties of Northern California, Southern California, San Diego and Imperial Counties.
  • ATT
  • BSA | The Software Alliance, Technology Consumers Association, Information Technology Industry Council and TechNet
  • Center for Democracy & Technology
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation and 46 technologists, researchers and cryptographers
  • Intel
  • Cryptography and iPhone security experts like Dino Dai Zovi, Dan Boneh (Stanford), Charlie Miller, Dr. Hovav Shacham (UC San Diego), Bruce Schneier (Harvard), Dan Wallach (Rice) and Jonathan Zdziarski
  • The Media Institute
  • David Kaye (United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression)
  • Salihin Kondoker (husband of one of the victims of the San Bernardino attack)

Did you miss any company? Well, no Samsung supporting Apple. In fact, the South Korean said Bloomberg that user privacy is very important and that creating a backdoor in its products it would undoubtedly undermine the trust of users (ie demonstrating Apple support). Still, the company said it was in doubt whether it would make the move as amicus curiae.

A note is worthwhile: while the media decided to take the South Korean's foot because she did not show support in justice, the truth is that no other smartphone manufacturer has done this. We don't have names like LG, HTC, Motorola (Lenovo), Huawei, Xiaomi or even PC makers like HP, ASUS, etc.

Regardless, no doubt such a list helps Apple to show that its point of view is not unique and that the matter deserves a lot of discussion before a final decision is made.