from the unlock-iphones-with-this-one-weird-hack dept.
John McAfee offers to unlock killer's iPhone
McAfee says that he and his team can break into the phone within three weeks. McAfee states his motive for the offer is because "he didn't want Apple to be forced to implement a 'back door'".
Bill Gates Takes Middle Road in FBI iPhone Unlock Dispute
Bill Gates has apparently sided with the FBI in the dispute over the unlocking of a "specific" iPhone, breaking with other technology industry leaders:
Apple should comply with the FBI's request to unlock an iPhone as part of a terrorism case, Microsoft founder Bill Gates says, staking out a position that's markedly different from many of his peers in the tech industry, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The two titans aired their views on what's become a public debate over whether Apple should be compelled to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. "This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case," Gates told the Financial Times.
However, in a follow-up interview with Bloomberg, Gates said he was disappointed by reports (such as my original submission #2 below) that he had sided with the FBI in its legal dispute with Apple:
In an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Gates says he was "disappointed" by reports that he supported the FBI in its legal battle with Apple, saying "that doesn't state my view on this." Still, Gates took a more moderate stance than some of his counterparts in the tech industry, not fully backing either the FBI or Apple but calling for a broader "discussion" on the issues. "I do believe that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the government, on our behalf — like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future — that that is valuable." But he called for "striking [a] balance" between safeguards against government power and security.
[Continues.]
Apple versus FBI ... A simple proposal.
Since we keep talking about Apple versus the FBI, I thought I'd propose a simple solution to the problem, which as far as I can think would satisfy most parties...
The problem is getting access to a known terrorist's encrypted information. The question is whether Apple should threaten their own security, and the trust of their customers worldwide (as other states could demand the same for their "terrorists"), for what's likely to be an limited or insignificant chunk of data. Apple gets bad publicity regardless of the outcome.
Well, it turns out that we already pay some people to secretly do what Apple is being asked to do: our good old friends at the NSA. They're pretty good at cracking "Bad Guy" systems, and people know that. So my proposal is pretty simple:
1) Give the Terrorist's encrypted device to the NSA.
2) Let it be known that a Classified meeting happened at the NSA with Apple's security gurus.
3) The NSA "allocates proper resources to defend the country against a clear computer-based threat", performs its magic, and provides access to the phone for the FBI.
What's the point?
- Apple cannot reveal what the NSA requested to know to help open the phone. It's Classified, which is easily justified by Apple's security being important to the US.
- The NSA doesn't have to reveal whether they could have done it without Apple's help, and whether their solution is applicable to more than just that phone.
- Apple is not compelled to create software for the government just because a judge said so, and it also stops having to explain why it seemingly protects a terrorist's data.
- Apple can keep telling customers and other governments that it is not sure how to safely bypass the security. Should another government request similar information, they may get those details which are not protected by US regulations, and if that coincidentally isn't enough to also open a target's phone, it must have been that the NSA guys are really very very good.
- The FBI gets the data they requested (officially what they want) without further delays and lawyers.
Not only would both Apple and the FBI both get what they want despite the apparent incompatible goals, but the NSA would be the good guys for actually doing their job. Some people will argue that handing the secrets to the government is necessarily a bad thing. But the NSA doesn't share its recipes with other agencies, may already have those secrets anyway, and the security scheme on that phone was already superseded in newer device versions, limiting the potential for reuse.
What do Soylentils think?
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
Related Stories
Previously on SoylentNews: Apple Ordered by Judge to Help Decrypt San Bernadino Shooter's phone
Former NSA Director Claims Many Top Gov't Officials Side With Apple
Choice quotes from an interview with Gen. Michael Hayden (archive.is) on Wednesday:
"The issue here is end-to-end, unbreakable encryption—should American firms be allowed to create such a thing?" he told the Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey. "You've got [FBI director] Jim Comey on one side saying, I am really going to suffer if I can't read Tony Soprano's email. Or, if I've got to ask Tony for the PIN number before I get to read Tony's emails. Jim Comey makes that complaint, and I get it. That is right. There is an unarguable downside to unbreakable encryption."
"I think Jim Comey is wrong...Jim's logic is based on the belief that he remains the main body. That you should accommodate your movements to him, which is the main body. And I'm telling you, with regard to the cyber domain, he's not. You are."
And by the way? If I were in Jim Comey's job, I'd have Jim Comey's point of view. I understand. But I've never been in Jim Comey's job...my view on encryption is the same as [former Secretary of Homeland Security] Mike Chertoff's, it's the same as [former Deputy Secretary of Defense] Bill Lynn's, and it's the same as [former NSA director] Mike McConnell, who is one of my predecessors."
It's interesting for this opinion to be coming from this source.
[Continues.]
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.
Russia Today reports
The US public doesn't need a Digital Security Commission; they need the FBI to stop deceiving everyone and tell the truth that it wants to spy on Americans, John McAfee, developer of the first commercial anti-virus program told RT's Ed Schultz.
[...] "The FBI wants Apple to change their software so that it removes the check for security, so that we don't check for security anymore. Once it has that software, they can use that software on any phone. But they say they only need it for one phone."
[...] "You need a hardware engineer and a [software] engineer. The hardware engineer takes the phone apart and copies the instruction set, which are the iOS and applications, and your memory. And then you run a program called a disassembler, which takes all the ones and zeros and gives you readable instructions. Then the coder sits down and he reads through. What he is looking for is the first access to the keypad, because that is the first thing you do when you input your pad. It'll take half an hour. When you see that, then he reads the instructions for where in memory this secret code is stored. It is that trivial--a half an hour.
...The FBI knows this, Apple knows this."[...] "In either case, if they (the FBI) don't know, that is tragic; if they do know it, then they are deceiving the American public and Apple and everyone else by asking for a universal key."
Video
Do you see any flaws in McAffee's explanation?
Previous: Apple Wants Court To Rule If It Can Be Forced To Unlock iPhones
Seems Like Everyone has an Opinion About Apple vs. the FBI
Update: TPP-Exposing Journalist Ed Schultz Lands on His Feet at RT
John McAfee Announces He Will Run For President of the United States
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.
Related: FBI vs. Apple Encryption Fight Continues
Seems Like Everyone has an Opinion About Apple vs. the FBI
Washington Post: The FBI Paid "Gray Hat(s)", Not Cellebrite, for iPhone Unlock
FBI Can't Say How It Hacked IPhone 5C
Researcher Bypasses iPhone 5c Security With NAND Mirroring
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @03:46PM
Everybody ...
Wait, how did that saying go again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:35PM
Bosses are like diapers... Full of $hit and all over your a$$.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @09:53PM
I believe it goes: "Executive Suits are like Assholes, both are etymologically linked to assassins."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @03:59PM
Well I tell you what. I side with the
()UF)*&@#JLX!
[NO CARRIER]
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:03PM
No, Apple Has Not Unlocked 70 iPhones For Law Enforcement [techcrunch.com]
Court documents detail 13 ‘similar’ Apple devices under FBI investigation [theverge.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:14PM
The NSA is supposed to be forbidden to operate within the US's borders...so no...giving the phone to them is NOT OK.
Any other bright ideas bob?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:26PM
Bringing the phone to outside US borders should not be that hard. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:00PM
The waiting area at Customs & Border Protection is extra-constitutional territory I hear...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:47PM
Yes, that explains why they don't collect an immense quantity of data on US citizens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:41PM
So your reasoning is that since they are already breaking the rules we should encourage more of it?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday February 24 2016, @07:30PM
> The NSA is supposed to be forbidden to operate within the US's borders
Completely wrong. The NSA routinely assists US companies to help them secure products.
My previous company was making parts which could be used in security products. The NSA reviewed every generation and provided our Cleared people with feedback on vulnerabilities to tampering, and mitigation routes. The NSA is tasked with defensive actions, not just offensive ones.
You mean that the NSA shouldn't SPY on US citizens in the USA. Well, this phone is not a case of spying, it's a case of using decryption knowledge to, under warrant, recover information from a phone which was not property of the deceased (nobody's objecting to the phone being seized), assisting a US manufacturer in a clear case involving an operative of a foreign terror group.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @09:22PM
This is a domestic law enforcement operation. This is completely an FBI matter. It is one thing for the NSA to perform defensive assessments. For it to start offensive operations on domestic cases is definitely crossing the line.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:14PM
- Apple can keep telling customers and other governments that it is not sure how to safely bypass the security. Should another government request similar information, they may get those details which are not protected by US regulations, and if that coincidentally isn't enough to also open a target's phone, it must have been that the NSA guys are really very very good.
Maybe I'm not fully understanding bob's reasoning. But while Apple may be able to say that legally they don't know how to do it, it would be fairly obvious that the TLAs are going to know that either A) the NSA can crack it, or B) Apple does know how to do it and is just handwaving for legal reasons.
Did I hear correctly that this specific phone was before Apple upgraded their security, so they actually may be able to retrieve the data? If the security in all subsequent versions of the OS can't be circumvented even by Apple via non-superhuman means, it dilutes the impact of the issue (assuming of course this isn't like Android where 90% of users aren't running an outdated version of the software).
Well, it dilutes the issue if common sense about precedent is applied. Which of course doesn't happen.
P.S: I'm still mad about Alsup, the only guy who apparently knows what the fuck he's talking about when ruling on computing matters, got his verdict overturned (or sent back, or whatever) in the Oracle case.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:46PM
I don't know how Apple constructs those things, but if the memory is a separate chip from the CPU it should be pretty easy to crack.
We have a president who posted a fake video of himself shitting on America
(Score: 2, Informative) by WillR on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:58PM
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:32PM
Couldn't this all have been prevented if Apple had made the iPhone require the password before the phone will allow a firmware upgrade? To avoid bricking devices with forgotten passwords, you should be able to force a firmware upgrade as long as it's a clean install with all the data erased.
I'm not a developer or a crypto guy but logically I can't see a reason why this wouldn't work. Am I missing something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:50PM
Making the phones un-crackable by-design, with tamper-proof hardware, is the only way they can get out from under this BS.
This also guarantees the 4th amendment rights of everyone who buys them.
One of those rare occasions were both producer and consumer win and the government is kept in check all at the same time.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:48PM
Yap, but that would require them to be less of a control-freak. It probably won't happen. All this talk about Apple's great security, and if it was an encrypted Android device the answer would have just been "No, it we can't help you".
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:35PM
I've read several opinons on that "all writs act" which government is leaning on. IMHO, it doesn't apply. Government has no authority to force you, me, or any corporation to engage in some occupation which we don't choose to work. In this case, Apple BUILDS computers, and attempts to make them safe and secure. Government wants to crack one of those computers. Crackign is not Apple's business. Let the gubbermint hire some crackers.
Oh, wait. Gubbermint tends to persecute crackers into suicide, right? Hmmmm. What a dillemna, huh?
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @04:58PM
this should be fairly simple:
if you have possession of the iPhone you give it to apple and apple
instructs its update server, which for example pushes "much-liked"
OS upgrades to all global devices, to send one specific "update" to only this apple device:
the update would like-kindda disable the encryption-software-os on the phone?
so two things needed:
-a search warrant
-physical possession of the device in question.
this "solution" should put to rest any fears of l3tt3rs snooping on you whilst holding
your device in your own hands on some random beach.
caveat: ofc the "secret" update from apple for the in-question device is sent over the interwebZ tubs, which
ofc is infested with sn00pers, so there is the "danger" that the "secret" encryption-disabling packet(s) will
be grabbed off the wires and then "replayed" at random-will ^_^
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:04PM
caveat: ofc the "secret" update from apple for the in-question device is sent over the interwebZ tubs, which
ofc is infested with sn00pers, so there is the "danger" that the "secret" encryption-disabling packet(s) will
be grabbed off the wires and then "replayed" at random-will ^_^
Thanks for demonstrating how your own idea is terrible.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:25PM
yeah, but you didn't comment on the juicy bit: the update server is under apples control
and the apple device trusts the update server, e.g. whatever the update server tells the device to install, the device will install!
i haven't ever had god-like control over such a empire-building amount of devices but it shouldn't be technical impossible
to have a device install software that makes the encryption ..uhm ..errr... non-functional, even if apple doesn't have the keys.
the encryption "engine" on the device is controllable by apples update server?
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:08PM
I cannot tell a difference between Bill Gates's statements and Google's Sundar Pichai's statements.
If they are different, please let me know. But please use quotes from their statements (Sundars is 700
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:10PM
Typo alert: (Sundar's is < 700 characters)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:44PM
It's not a typo, you have to use html code for less than sign, soylent will filter it out otherwise
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:10PM
I was certain FBI is asking Apple to open the phone in the privacy of Apple's own office, without detailing to FBI how it was done. Apple is not making a tool & handing it over, rather using their own proprietary technique and then return the phone to FBI. Seems to be a no-fuss issue. -> But then Cook's public announcement of the legal order described it differently, was he just snapping back because is twas a court order instead of a quiet request? Is he mitigating some sort of public image issue?
Back to original understanding, I was certain Apple is being asked to open phone and return it, with no tool or technique provided, (unless they leak it themselves). So what's the fuss? Thanks from an honest question.
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:31PM
There are a couple of levels of fuss.
One, if Apple can do it, then someone can do it. If someone can do it, another sufficently motivated party can probably do it. It not being actually impossible is one level of fuss.
Two, if Apple does it, then the software exists. This means that there will a lower cost to do it next time, so this kind of request can be made again. It also establishes the legal precedent for such requests.
Three, some people are philosophically opposed to the government forcing you to take any positive action.
Four, there is a very real political question of what either refusal or acquiesce will do to the "is strong encryption going to be legal" debate.
My 2 cents. For 1: This device already 4 generations old and newer versions are more secure. For 2: Most people are worried about some slippery slope that is not likely to materialize. For 3: We live in a society, reasonable accommodations must be made. For 4: I don't think strong encryption is going away anytime soon, and the impact of this on society will be forgotten in weeks./p.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:50PM
Apple can do it because they can almost definitely push a custom firmware without the devices consent, signed by their private key.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:11AM
For 2: Most people are worried about some slippery slope that is not likely to materialize.
It already has materialized in the form of the NSA's mass surveillance. If the government can do something to violate the privacy of a greater number of people, then it will do so. Creating a tool that will allow it to do so will only cause them to seize that tool so they can make use of it as much as possible. This is a simple inevitability.
For 3: We live in a society, reasonable accommodations must be made.
Forcing a company or person to create something that does not currently exist to defeat the security scheme they designed is not an example of a reasonable accommodation. It is like indentured servitude. Seizing something that already exists is significantly different.
For 4: I don't think strong encryption is going away anytime soon, and the impact of this on society will be forgotten in weeks./p.
Bad precedent isn't so easily forgotten. Strong encryption will not go away, but this sort of precedent will be yet another tool in the government's oppression toolbox that they can make use of to harass businesses and individuals.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:27PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2016, @04:43AM
The next step isn't doing it 175 times, it's requesting it to be added to the OS as a default feature so no intervention is needed at all.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 24 2016, @05:20PM
My honest take on this is that all parties in the dispute were right, to a degree:
- The FBI was right to ask. This is a potential line of evidence for identifying potential co-conspirators, and I'd expect them to try to follow it if they can.
- The court was right to order Apple to try to do so, if they could reasonably do so without compromising other users. Again, there's a real reason to look at these particular phones.
- Apple was right to say no, on the grounds that they could not reasonably do so without compromising other users.
So in the end, all the systems involved are operating correctly, and I really don't see the problem here unless guys with guns are showing up at Tim Cook's doorstep or something.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:08PM
How would you feel if the court ordered you to spend some of your spare time building roads? Or, let's say you are a web developer and the government orders you to spend some time working on a government website? Why should the government be able to force anyone to build anything? This isn't a simple case of providing information that is already in Apple's possession.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:40PM
> Why should the government be able to force anyone to build anything?
Technically, the government can force you to go fight someone, especially The_Evilz_Terruristz invading your country. Fighting by defeating their digital comms falls within the "wartime" things you'd be potentially compelled to assist with.
But that's not the Writs' Act.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @08:20PM
The government isn't forcing me to fight anyone. Sure, as a conscientious objector, I won't get paid, get the shitty jobs and have a few more downsides, but the clean conscious is worth it.
Also, you should look up how the U.S. treats objectors, both in the past and their current regulations. Boy, the war machine really hates them.
(Score: 2) by khchung on Thursday February 25 2016, @12:05AM
How would you feel if the court ordered you to spend some of your spare time building roads?
Probably better than the court ordering you to build a backdoor in your home so the FBI can come in to investigate "a very specific case". Of course, you also knew that once the backdoor was built, it just makes it easy for the FBI to use it again and again.
PLUS, with this precedence, now you could look forward to building backdoors for all your future new homes, too.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday February 25 2016, @02:23AM
How would you feel if the court ordered you to spend some of your spare time building roads?
Your logic is flawed in regards to Apple being asked to "crack" the security via a custom firmware update, as it is something Apple do not do as a standard part of their business model.
Please explain, with a rational, logical argument, how this case is any different to Apple pushing out a custom firmware update to deal with the Error 53 Fingerprint Scanner issue?
Both involve Apple deliberately bypassing their own security to grant access to the contents of the phone.
At the moment, it seems to boil down to;
Customers demanding Apple bypass the security of their phone due to the customers decision to purchase dodgy hardware for their device = good
FBI asking for Apple to assist in bypassing the security of an iPhone that was used by a mass-murderer/terrorist = bad.
And I do not want to hear anything about it setting precedents, as Apple set their own precedent when they came up with the Error 53 solution.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by quacking duck on Thursday February 25 2016, @03:19AM
The fix for Error 53 did not bypass their own security to grant access to the contents of the phone. Error 53 was a failure to complete authorization with Apple's servers after installing an iOS update, due to an overly aggressive component security check.
The fix for error 53 is what *should* have happened if the TouchID sensor is "tampered" with: Touch ID and related functions e.g. fingerprint login and ApplePay remains disabled, until taken to an Apple store to pair the components again. The rest of the phone remains usable and remains secure at the basic level.
TouchID is not the primary means of device access, it's just the most convenient. The passcode/phrase is still the final say, since you can't use TouchID after restarting the iPhone, or to initiate an iOS update, or if you haven't used TouchID for 48 hours.
The fix involves restoring the device from iTunes, after which... you You still need to enter a passcode. This is the case with *any* iOS update.
So no, they have not "bypassed their own security to grant access to the contents of the phone," that is a gross misrepresentation of what the fix actually does.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday February 25 2016, @03:33AM
Thank you for the clarification.
When I've asked on other forums, I received very flakey, and often frothy-mouthed rants with very little actual facts in them.
Until this situation, I paid little attention to Apple security features, as I'm not an iThingy owner, and dont have to support any in my circle of family or friends.
I stand corrected, and informed. *tips hat*
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday February 25 2016, @04:34AM
Simple. One is done to maintain or increase sales and the other is likely to reduce sales.
In other words, you are not really interested in reading about anything that contradicts your world view. That explains quite clearly what type of person you are.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Thursday February 25 2016, @02:23PM
To be fair to to Bognosticus, I challenged him at length on this [soylentnews.org], and he acknowledged that he stood corrected.
I am grateful there are still people willing to consider corrections and publicly acknowledge their error, rather than doubling down on their initial strong stance based on incomplete information.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:17AM
Please explain, with a rational, logical argument, how this case is any different to Apple pushing out a custom firmware update to deal with the Error 53 Fingerprint Scanner issue?
Choice, for one. Apple chose to do that themselves.
And I do not want to hear anything about it setting precedents, as Apple set their own precedent when they came up with the Error 53 solution.
What does Apple's past action have to do with government precedent? Nothing. The consequences of the two are far too different, and bad court precedent can have terrible societal consequences.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday February 24 2016, @06:58PM
I'm still left wondering what they think lurks around on that phone that they can't get through all their other methods.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @07:27PM
JLaw nudes!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kevinl on Wednesday February 24 2016, @07:05PM
People have been saying that this is just like a search of a house, so why treat it so differently? But they are missing the critical point. The proper analogy to the FBI's request is:
"What is the difference between the police searching your phone with a warrant and them searching the contents of your mind?"
For which the answer is: "The 5th Amendment protects people from revealing the contents of their mind."
This precedent is not really about phones. It's about obtaining permission to become honest-to-God Thought Police. Go to a restaurant today and watch the people huddled over their phones texting each other, sometimes even texting without talking: it looks like telepathy after a while, and in fact it really is a very primitive form of technology-mediated telepathy. Let's follow this forward: in 20 years one won't need a screen to see, it will be beamed into custom thin eye contacts; 20 years after that we will be able to issue commands to the "smartphone" without revealing them to anyone looking at us (subvocalizing, eye tracking, or even an embedded fMRI-like scanner). At that point the "smartphone" will truly be a cybernetic extension of the human body, and all of the data "on it" will actually be data "in us".
If we do not draw the line here, then law enforcement everywhere will have legal right until the end of time to access that data "inside us". No vendor anywhere in the world will be legally permitted to create secure data storage or secure communications between people. Having a truly private "thought" will land you in jail.
Apple sees this, and I am glad that they are taking this stand. It doesn't matter that this is the FBI, that this phone was used by a murderer, or that newer phones cannot do this anyway. This is about the principle of whether people are allowed to think things and remember things only for themselves. We have to make sure that even murderers get the right to have their own private thoughts. The Founding Fathers certainly thought so, it's why they put the 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
The smartphone interface will change over time into direct neural implants. We have to decide this as a civilization now before the technology sneaks up on us in the approaching decades. If we don't support Apple today, then we will be handing over the minds (not their "papers") of our descendants -- all of them, all over the world -- to whomever has enough guns to take over their government. Do we really want a world where such a group could demand (and obtain) absolute proof of loyalty to their cause?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 25 2016, @01:07AM
That is the distinction. An arresting officer (or anyone else for that matter) can take a paper from my hands, and read it. He can't read my mind. The only way they can extract information from my mind, is to coerce that information. "Tell me what you were thinking, or go to jail forever!" Or torture.
Your mind is the last refuge. Government shouldn't be capable of following you inside the privacy of your mind. And, THAT is what the issue of strong encryption is all about.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." (generally attributed to Richelieu)
If, instead of six lines written by an honest man, you have all of his thoughts, ideas, and fantasies from all of his adult life - he is toast. You can prove everything, from sedition, to genocide, to rape, to child molestation, to murder - anything and everything.
Already, we've seen prosecutors insisting that someone MUST HAVE poisoned the deceased, because that person did a Google search about arsenic.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:28AM
The smartphone interface will change over time into direct neural implants.
How did you reach this conclusion?
And I don't even like the sound of that. Just what I need: Non-free proprietary user-subjugating software in my body. No thanks. It's possible for it to run entirely free software, but from what I have observed, that is highly unlikely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2016, @09:10PM
What is on the phone that the cell carrier does not already know? I keep hearing about how we need to know who they called. The company payed the bills. Why do they not look at the billing statements?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sulla on Thursday February 25 2016, @12:49AM
Whatever information could have been gained from this device has already been acted upon by whoever the device would have revealed. The person contacted, organizations they worked with, etc are not sitting around thinking "good thing apple wont hand it over and I can continue my life in secrecy". No they are long gone, using different names and addresses, and on to some new project.
This is about expanding government powers and abilities.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2016, @05:39AM
All the Democratic and Republican candidates have said they either want Apple to be compelled to crack the phone, or want a "balance" to be struck between security and insecurity. McAfee not only has an opinion I agree with, but actually offered to do something about it.