Most, ok, all, of my understanding of computer security and tech savvy is based on movies and television.

Exhibit A: Several years ago when the dvd player in my laptop computer went haywire, I explained the problem to the technician as something like “the movies all look like in The Matrix with green lines of binary code cascading down the picture.” The technician gave me a small kind smile, the equivalent of a pat on the head, took the machine and I got it back by week’s end, picture restored.

Exhibit B: My understanding of the pervasiveness of encryption is based on Sherlock’s speech to John Watson in The Blind Banker episode of the PBS series Sherlock. “The world runs on codes and ciphers, John... cryptography inhabits our every waking moment.”

Exhbit C: And hacking? Well, the Counter Terrorism Unit of the television series “24” had computer protocols ad infinitum for uncovering the computer generated and concealed secrets of the bad guys series hero Jack Bauer was pursuing.

Plus, codes are cracked, secrets uncovered and crises averted usually in the neat confines of 60-, 90- or 120- minute sized slickly produced packages of make-believe.

So when early last month when the government wanted tech giant Apple to unlock the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of two attackers of a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernadino, Calif., in which 14 were killed and 22 wounded, my naivete betrayed me.

Wasn’t there a real-life Chloe O’Brien, the brainy and somewhat surly computer analyst on “24,” who could crack open the phone before the commercial break? Or a talented teenage computer expert like Cindy Mackenzie, appropriately nicknamed Mac, from the cult television series “Veronica Mars” who hacked into computers and cracked code between homework assignments?

Turns out the situation is not so simple.

In an interview on the radio program “Here and Now” tech reporter Dawn Chmielewski describes the request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as two pronged. First, the FBI wants to have Apple develop software to turn off the ‘autoerase” feature of the iPhone 5 used by Farook, a feature that shuts off access to an iPhone after 10 unsuccessful tries of a password. Second, the government would like Apple to make it possible to use a device to make multiple guesses at the password to unlock the phone.

The government argues the order would apply only to the phone Farook used. In a letter to Apple customers published on the web Apple executive Tim Cook warns of the demand as an “unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.”

Leading minds in tech and Silicon Valley such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Bill Gates of Microsoft and tech minds from Google and Twitter have waded into the controversy.

In an interview with National Public Radio Central Intelligence Director Jim Brennan said “there needs to be a very healthy debate and discussion about what the government should be able to do and access when it comes to electronic communications” where protection of citizens are concerned.

And media reports of a study by the Pew Research Center finds 51 percent of Americans believe Apple should help.

Ambivalence may best describe my take. Unlocking one phone in the grand scheme of things does not seem to terrible, however, undoing the software hack to hack what was to be secure does not seem feasible either.

What we need is Neo, Sherlock Holmes or Chloe O’Brien to solve the case.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press