Utilitarians are concerned with the consequences of actions: Rather than worrying about whether a particular act is right or wrong, they ask whether the outcome of doing so would be beneficial or harmful.
Libertarians are concerned with personal freedom: They consider an action wrong if it impinges upon the rights of individuals to do as they please without outside interference or aggression.
Kantians are concerned with moral duty and consistency: They decide whether an act is right or wrong based on whether it would be rational to universalize that action, that is, to make a rule that everyone can do it.
All three systems agree on most things: Murder is wrong for a utilitarian because it causes much more harm than good; murder is wrong for a libertarian because it is violence that destroys the freedom of the victim; murder is wrong for a Kantian because we could not live in a world where everyone murders everyone, because then we would no longer be alive at all.
But sometimes they don't agree. Which brings me to this Apple dilemma.
The US government wants Apple to write code that could be used to unlock a large number of Apple phones in the future; they intend to use it to unlock a terrorist's phone, which is legal and largely uncontroversial; but the code is far more general than that and could be used for thousands of other phones.
The utilitarians have the hardest time with this dilemma. On the one hand, there are clear benefits if Apple unlocks the phone; it improves the chances of catching future terrorists and therefore could make us safer. On the other hand, there are major costs as well; if this technology becomes widely available it would undermine the security of a large number of electronic devices and increase the risk of hackers stealing people's information or even money.
The utilitarian would therefore be most interested in the expected utility, that is, the sum of all costs and benefits, multiplied by the probability that each will actually occur. The cost of being killed by a terrorist is much higher than the cost of having your credit card stolen; but the terrorist attack is also far less likely (and the unlocked phone will make a big difference in hacking probability but not much in terrorism probability), so the expected loss in utility from terrorist attacks is actually smaller than the expected loss in utility from hacking. For this reason, I believe the utilitarian would oppose the unlocking of the phones, because the risk of making phones less secure is too high to justify the small gain in protection against terrorism. But the utilitarian will feel conflicted and ambivalent, and constantly wonder if the probability calculations were right.
The libertarian will not hesitate: Do not unlock the phone. The violation of privacy and personal security will be much too large, and the government has no legitimate authority to issue this command. They could legitimately get a warrant for one phone---but this is like asking for a warrant for all phones. The libertarian will not feel ambivalent at all; this is wrong, and must be stopped.
The Kantian will now go through the nine steps you listed. But we've been given a slightly different dilemma: Not whether to unlock the phone, but whether to secretly unlock the phone.
1. The ethical dilemma is whether to lie about unlocking the phone, saying you won't even though you will.
2. The agent is Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
3. The task for Tim Cook is to decide whether to write false press releases and order his engineers to comply.
4. Tim Cook's primary job is to maximize profit for Apple Corporation, but he also has a moral duty to engage in that profit maximization in ethically responsible way. This means representing his company honestly, which this would not be.
5. The primary duty associated with the role of Tim Cook is to maximize profit, under constraints of ethical and legal behavior. But since he would be lying, he is breaking those constraints.
6. The categorical imperative is to never lie. Kant is actually quite extreme on this; he really means never lie.
7. It is, and at least if the opposite is "always lie", that would clearly not be universalizable. A world where everyone lies is a world where language is meaningless; a world where all press releases are false is a world where press releases tell us nothing.
8. Here's where it gets a bit tougher. We might or might not be willing to switch places with the software engineers, but we probably wouldn't want to switch places with the people who are being lied to.
9. We are definitely using people as means---we use the software engineers as a means to create profit. But unless we say that all jobs for-hire are in violation of Kantian principles (which Kant himself would never have said), then we must be prepared to accept that it can be ethical to use people as a means for making profit, so long as we also respect their dignity as human beings. Software engineers at Apple are generally well-paid and treated fairly, so it seems like we're doing that. (Workers at the sweatshops Apple contracts for manufacturing, on the other hand...) Nor are we using the government officials merely as a means, nor the customers affected by our decision. So we're good on this one.
Are you using the readers of the press release merely as a means? Maybe, since you're basically ignoring their interest in knowing the truth. But you aren't causing them really great harm, so I don't think that's really the problem; the problem is that you are lying, and lying is not universalizable.
Therefore, the Kantian would absolutely not lie about writing the code; they would never lie about anything.
However, I think the Kantian answer is actually to comply with the order and write the code. Your duty as a CEO says you should maximize profit within the bounds of the law, and the law clearly says that you should comply. But you should do so openly, not in secret.
Thus, we have three answers:
The utilitarian says "I'm not sure, but I think probably not."
The libertarian says "Absolutely not! Why are you even considering this?"
The Kantian says "Yes, it is your duty to comply. But above all you must not lie about it."
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