Milan court sets Italian precedent, ruling Apple provide family with data from their dead son's iPhone

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, February 11, 2021
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A Milan civil court on Wednesday ordered technology giant Apple to grant parents access to the mobile phone data belonging to their son who was killed in a car accident nearly a year ago.

It is the first time an Italian court has issued such a ruling, and it is in conflict with the California-based company's stances in similar situations in other jurisdictions. In this case, Apple refused an initial request from the parents before they took the case to court.

In her ruling, Section Judge Martina Flamini said Apple's claims that providing the data would set a precedent that would ultimately make its devices less secure "completely illegitimate." The case is the first of its kind in Italy.

Apple's Italian division confirmed the ruling when contacted by Xinhua, but an official said the company would not comment until it had a chance to review the ruling.

Carlo Costanza, a 25-year-old chef, died in a March 3, 2020 accident that also destroyed his mobile phone. But since he regularly backed his phone up onto a virtual server, Apple could access the data.

According to television and newspaper reports, the parents said they wanted to have access to their son's photos, videos, and data in order to "fill a sense of emptiness" left by his death. They also said they'd like to have access to the young chef's recipes as part of a project they would like to carry out "dedicated to his memory."

The first high-profile case of this type involving Apple arose in 2016, when the company refused to unlock an iPhone used by a shooter in California.

More recently, Apple refused to unlock the mobile phone owned by a shooter in Florida when asked to by the United States Justice Department in January 2020. In that case, Apple provided account and transaction information related to the shooter, but the company would not unlock the phone.

Last year in Austria, a court made a ruling similar to Wednesday's ruling in Milan. Apple refused to grant access to the data but eventually agreed to reset the password to the phone's backup -- effectively giving the family access to the backup data without sacrificing iPhone security systems.

According to legal analysts, Apple will have a right to appeal Flamini's ruling. But after the ruling, there is no concrete indication that the company will do so.

According to Corriere della Sera, Italy's most circulated newspaper, the case is likely to set a precedent over who a person's "digital legacy" belongs to after the original owner is gone. "Can web giants, such as Apple... refuse to grant the inheritance of that online life that is part of a person's identity?"

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