In the standoff between Apple and the FBI, each side is recruiting powerful allies and waging a war of words. As the story unfolds, we’ll fact-check the boldest claims, starting with this one by FBI Director James Comey.

“We’re moving to a place where there are warrantproof places in our life,” Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee. “That’s a world we’ve never lived in before in the United States that has profound consequences for public safety, and all I’m saying is, we shouldn’t drift there.”

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Before telephones became popular in the 20th century, conversations between citizens were private. Over time, it took vigorous debate before the Supreme Court paved the way for wiretapping of phone conversations. And Stanford law professor David Sklansky says it is not a given that every new technology must be police-friendly or police-accessible.

Compared with telephones of yore, the iPhone “has a lot more information in it and different kinds of information and people use it in different ways,” Sklansky says. It’s a mishmash of personal diary, physical tracker, photo album, health record repository on top of a phone.

So just because courts decided eavesdropping on phones serves the public interest, Sklansky says, that doesn’t dictate what should happen with the iPhone.