Apple, the maker of iPhones, is refusing to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock a cellphone used by the late Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife, Tashfeen Malik carried off a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in December that left 14 people dead.
Apple's action now sets in motion a legal showdown - one that really is less about the dead Farook's privacy and more about the privacy of all the rest of us.
Apple says it does not possess the technology to open the phone and will not create it because, once they do, that genie will be out of the box - not just for one phone, but for all phones. And that, according to Apple Chief Executive Officer, Tim Cook, would threaten the privacy of all Apple customers.
It's a thorny situation. And one that engenders understandable sympathy for both sides.
Law enforcement authorities say new encryption technologies hamper their ability to prevent and solve crime.
On the other hand, not being able to see through walls also hampers law enforcement's ability to prevent and solve crime. Yet none of us wants police and the FBI to have and use X-ray glasses so they can stand outside our homes and look in.
If you protect your smartphone with a passcode, the device is encrypted. It's the digital equivalent of a safe that only you have the key to.
But on Tuesday, the Justice Department convinced a federal judge to order Apple to create new software - a hack - that would enable the authorities investigating the San Bernardino massacre to crack the encryption on Farook's iPhone by trying a large number of possible passcodes.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the FBI is only interested in unlocking this single device in this one investigation.
But Apple and opponents of the mandated hack say that is naive, at best.
Sophia Cope, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes in The New York Times that "in reality, the government is taking advantage of this tragic event to establish a dangerous precedent. The practical problem is that if Apple creates this new unlocking technology, its deployment would be like opening Pandora's Box. The security of all iPhone users would be at risk. The government is essentially asking Apple to create a master key that can be used not only to unlock this one iPhone, but every iPhone."
Certainly such FBI requests to unlock phones would become routine. Soon hackers and identity thieves would love it, too - not to mention jealous spouses or even enemy countries. And just imagine what ISIS might do with a phone stolen from a nuclear reactor operator or a Wall Street trader.
It seems that mandating a digital defect is hardly the answer to national security - let alone individual safety.