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Here's an extra story related to FBI Director Comey's questioning on Wednesday. It's a piece of "classified information":
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the FBI, said publicly this week that the government paid $900,000 to break into the locked iPhone of a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shootings, even though the FBI considers the figure to be classified information.
The FBI also has protected the identity of the vendor it paid to do the work. Both pieces of information are the subject of a federal lawsuit by The Associated Press and other news organizations that have sued to force the FBI to reveal them.
California's Feinstein cited the amount while questioning FBI Director James Comey at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Wednesday.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 07 2017, @04:48AM (5 children)
Security has always been an ongoing arms race. Sure, Apple fixes it, someone else figures out how to defeat the fix, Apple fixes again - on and on, ad nauseum. If Apple were to figure out how to make the phone only energize at the touch of a living hand, the FBI will turn to keeping corpses "alive" to turn the phone on. (Correct body temp, a "pulse", some finely tuned electro activity, a dash of DNA, whatever it takes to trigger the on/off function.)
Long story short - if you can build something, someone else can break it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:36AM (4 children)
Yup... just like DRM.
Very expensive and time consuming whack-a-mole that none of us much benefit from, except the vendors of DRM stuff.
They oughta save all that encryption for things that NEED encryption... like businesses storing personal info and banking credentials.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:53AM (3 children)
I'll be switching from ssh to telnet real soon now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:41PM (2 children)
I'm switching from a cellphone to 2 soup cans and a very long string.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:07PM (1 child)
I see your string and raise you a laser velocimeter...
(or just a fine string that I shoot over your string with bow & arrow, connected to my can)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:01PM
I'll see your string and tie the other end to a velociraptor.