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Apple Denies FBI Request to Unlock Shooter's iPhone:
Apple once again is drawing the line at breaking into a password-protected iPhone for a criminal investigation, refusing a request by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help unlock the iPhones of a shooter responsible for an attack in Florida.
The company late Monday said it won't help the FBI crack two iPhones belonging to Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a Saudi-born Air Force cadet and suspect in a shooting that killed three people in December at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.
The decision is reminiscent of a scenario that happened during the investigation of a 2015 California shooting, and could pit federal law enforcement against Apple in court once again to argue over data privacy in the case of criminal investigations.
While Apple said it's helping in the FBI's investigation of the Pensacola shooting—refuting criticism to the contrary—the company said it won't help the FBI unlock two phones the agency said belonged to Alshamrani.
"We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation," the company said in a statement emailed to Threatpost. "Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing."
[...] The FBI sent a letter to Apple's general counsel last week asking the company to help the agency crack the iPhones, as their attempts until that point to guess the "relevant passcodes" had been unsuccessful, according to the letter, which was obtained by NBC News.
Attorney General William Barr followed up that request with a declaration Monday that the shooting was an act of terrorism and reiterated law enforcement's plea to Apple to unlock Alshamrani's phones—an iPhone 7 and iPhone 5. Alshamrani, who is believed to have acted alone, was killed during a shootout with security officers at the base.
"So far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance," Barr said in a press conference Monday. "This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order based on probable cause. We call on Apple and other technology companies to help us find a solution so that we can better protect the lives of Americans and prevent future attacks."
The scenario is similar to one that occurred when the FBI asked Apple to unlock the phone of Syed Farook, one of two men who carried out a shooting attack on a city meeting in San Bernardino, Calif. It also sets up a scenario in which a court could be the deciding factor if Apple must unlock the phones or not.
Related:
Federal Court Rules That the FBI Does Not Have to Disclose Name of iPhone Hacking Vendor
FBI Can't Say How It Hacked IPhone 5C
FBI Says it Might be Able to Hack IPhone Without Apple's Help
New York Judge Sides with Apple Rather than FBI in Dispute over a Locked iPhone
Seems Like Everyone has an Opinion About Apple vs. the FBI
Mom Whose Son Died in San Bernardino Massacre Backs Apple
Trump: Boycott Apple Unless They Unlock Shooter's Phone
Apple Ordered by Judge to Help Decrypt San Bernadino Shooter's phone
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:49AM (4 children)
Apple is a part of PRISM. PRISM effectively entails companies providing real time surveillance on anybody to the government at the government's sole discretion. This seems to be little more than a ploy on both players parts. The government wants people to support open unadulterated access to your devices and so picks softball cases with despicable villains. Apple also likely loves this since it lets them play up the whole 'yeah, we're totally about privacy - we'll even support a terrorist against the government, so you know we'll support you!'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:10AM (1 child)
Are phone manufacturers exempt from CALEA?
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:41AM
Yes. They're NOT carriers.
CALEA, so far, only applies to PSTN communications. Mobile phones provide PSTN services, but I don't believe CALEA mandates that private citizen end user equipment support real-time intercept. FBI tried that with modems and the Clipper chip, and it wasn't feasible. Currently they tap all PSTN communications at the Tier 1 backbone providers.
If phone manufacturers were not exempt, you would also see all manufacturers of devices connecting to the PSTN supporting real-time intercepts. That crappy $40 answering machine set from Office Depot would need to have protected mediation circuits within it. Which would be massively stupid, because it would open literally hundreds of millions of connections (read: holes) into the government surveillance apparatus. They like those devices nice and protected in the Tier 1 data centers.
What the big ass beef is about is that the phone manufacturers are supporting full device encryption and the simply abhorrent practice of the end user actually controlling the chain of trust from the bottom up.
Do we install master keys in all of our homes, cars, businesses, so the government can come in at any time? Nope. But since it's a computer, and digital, the government feels somehow that mandatory backdoors are warranted.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:28AM (1 child)
You are attributing more competence to these agencies than the evidence shows.
Apple has denied cooperating with PRISM, but that program does not apply here. Individual devices are encrypted. The FBI made a big stink after the San Bernardino attack [wikipedia.org] and took Apple to court, but eventually paid ~$1.3 million for a zero-day tool to unlock the iPhone 5C. The statements and actions of the FBI and DoJ in that case and others betray the fact that they do not have the level of access they want. Oftentimes they (or the NSA) could get it by hoarding and exploiting vulnerabilities, but it could become harder to unlock new phones as the hardware security features become more sophisticated.
Businesses are more important customers to Apple, Microsoft, Google et al. than the U.S. government. They may create broken products to kowtow to China where they could be easily replaced by homegrown companies, but they can resist the U.S. anti-encryption agenda. If they don't, competing solutions will arise.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:20PM
You packed a lot in those paragraphs. Let me start on the businesses being more important than the government. Google and Apple in particular have been engaging in all sorts of anti-competitive shenanigans. It's played a significant role in how they've grown so large. These are things that not long ago would risk a company getting completely dismantled. Now a days our government has remained completely mum aside from brief threats. I think this is in no small part because both companies have become major players in our surveillance and security apparatuses. Apple is of course a part of PRISM - they joined in 2012. Yay leaks. Companies are forced to lie about cooperation with our surveillance programs because national security /eyeroll. It's really more about government public relations. If people understood half the stuff we're actively engaging in, it'd make people inclined to actually do something about it - at the minimum making it an election issue.
Beyond that, two critical words: parallel construction. [wikipedia.org] Our surveillance programs are likely illegal and unconstitutional. But they cannot be challenged because in order to challenge them you need to show standing. In order to show standing you need to somehow have been affected by them. Since nobody can show standing, nobody can challenge them. And anytime anybody does try to show standing, discovery is impossible because the government can simply invoke 'national security'. Again, /eyeroll. As a consequence of this, nothing they provide can be used in court. And so law enforcement starts with the answer and then works backwards to achieve something that can be lawfully used in court. The song and dance about things like accessing information on the phone is not just for show. It's so the government can use the obtained information in court.