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
Related Stories
Judge Orders Apple to Unlock iPhone Belonging to San Bernardino Shooter
Apple has been ordered to assist in the unlocking of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. This may require updating the firmware to bypass restrictions on PIN unlock attempts:
Apple must assist the FBI in unlocking the passcode-protected encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters in California. US magistrate Sheri Pym says Cupertino must supply software that prevents the phone from automatically annihilating its user data when too many password attempts have been made.
The smartphone belonged to Syed Farook, who with his wife Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 coworkers on December 2. The couple died in a gun battle with police soon after. Cops have been unable to access Syed's iPhone 5C because they do not know the correct PIN, and will now gain the assistance of Apple, as ordered by Judge Pym [PDF] on Tuesday.
iOS 8 and above encrypts data on devices, requiring a four to six-digit PIN to unlock. After the first few wrong guesses, iOS waits a few minutes between accepting further PIN entry attempts, escalating to an hour's delay after the ninth failed login.
[...] Judge Pym wants Apple to come up with some magic software – perhaps a signed firmware update or something else loaded during boot-up – that will allow the FBI to safely brute-force the PIN entry without the device self-destructing. This code must only work on Farook's phone, identified by its serial numbers, and no other handset. The code must only be run on government or Apple property, and must not slow down the brute-forcing process.
Apple has five days to appeal or demonstrate that it cannot comply with the order. It is crucial to note that the central district court of California has not instructed Apple to crack its encryption – instead it wants Apple to provide a tool to effectively bypass the unlocking mechanism. "It's technically possible for Apple to hack a device's PIN, wipe, and other functions. Question is can they be legally forced to hack," said iOS security expert Jonathan Ździarski.
At a campaign event in South Carolina the day before the state's GOP primary, Donald Trump urged the crowd to boycott all Apple products because of CEO Tim Cook's refusal to help law enforcement decrypt the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the terrorist massacre at San Bernardino, CA last December. Trump added casually, "I just thought of that". But he later repeated the call for a boycott at another rally, and on Twitter:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal
4:38 PM - 19 Feb 2016
The Washington Post's Brian Fung noted that even while Trump was calling for the boycott, he was tweeting from an iPhone. However, in a follow-up tweet Trump noted he had both Apple and Samsung phones; he evidently switched to the latter for subsequent tweets. Others have pointed out a row of iPads used for POS for merchandise at Trump campaign events.
The Washington Times reports that Carole Adams, the mother of Robert Adams — a 40-year-old environmental health specialist who was shot dead in the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife in December, is siding with Apple in its battle to protect consumer's privacy rights. Adams says she stands by Apple's decision to fight a federal court order to create software that would allow federal authorities to access the shooter's password-blocked iPhone. Adams says she understands the FBI's need to search Farook's phone, but it has to be done without putting others at risk.
"This is what separates us from communism, isn't it? The fact we have the right to privacy," says Adams. "I think Apple is definitely within their rights to protect the privacy of all Americans. This is what makes America great to begin with, that we abide by a Constitution that gives us the right of privacy, the right to bear arms, and the right to vote."
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 has achieved a legal victory in a Brooklyn case that attempted to use the All Writs Act, similar to the case of a San Bernardino shooter's locked iPhone:
A magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court in New York has handed Apple a legal victory in a Brooklyn drug case where federal investigators asked for help getting into a locked iPhone.
Though the ruling isn't precedent-setting or binding on other courts, it hits on a similar overarching theme of government access to encrypted data, as The Washington Post reports:
"The two cases involve different versions of iPhone's operating system and vastly different requests for technical help, but they both turn on whether a law from 1789 known as the All Writs Act can be applied to cases in which the government cannot get at encrypted data stored on suspects' devices."
NPR's Joel Rose previously outlined the premise of this Brooklyn case, which predated the legal clash over an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters:
"Jun Feng pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine last year. As part of its investigation, the government obtained a search warrant for Feng's iPhone. But the phone was locked by a passcode, so prosecutors asked a judge for an order compelling Apple to bypass it."
That order was based on the same law as the San Bernardino court order compelling Apple's help in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook before the Dec. 2 attack, in which he and his wife killed 14 people.
The Justice Department will appeal the case. FBI Director James Comey and Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell will appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday to testify on encryption.
The FBI has moved to vacate a Tuesday hearing while it explores an option that may allow it to access the contents of a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone without cooperation from Apple. The FBI wants time to test the method so that it can be sure that it is viable and won't destroy the data:
The FBI says it may have found a way to crack into the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone without Apple's help. While it explores this option, the government has filed a motion to vacate a hearing set for Tuesday that would be the next step toward settling the battle between Apple and the FBI. The FBI says that on Sunday, an "outside party" demonstrated to the FBI a "possible method for unlocking" Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone.
Who is the "outside party"? Is there any such agency that could help?
At Apple's latest launch event, CEO Time Cook reiterated his commitment to privacy and security:
Like the iPhone 5C, the new iPhone SE includes Apple's encryption technology, which jumbles up information stored in the phone so that it can only be viewed with a passcode. The phone's powered by Apple's iOS 9 software, which includes a feature that automatically wipes out data stored on the phone if someone incorrectly enters the wrong passcode 10 times.
This software, which Apple said is running on more than 80 percent of all the active iPhones and iPads in the world, is at the heart of Cook's battle with the government. And since this new phone uses some of Apple's latest and most powerful processors, customers will be able to upgrade and run new versions of iOS for the next several years. That means any new security precautions Apple puts in place can be added to this model.
"Many, many customers have asked for this, and I think they're going to love it," Cook, said during a media event announcing the device at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters. He kicked off the event to applause by saying Apple never planned to face off with the government over its security, but that it isn't going to back down. "This is an issue that impacts all of us, and we will not shrink from this responsibility."
The Guardian is reporting that...
On Wednesday, the FBI confirmed it wouldn't tell Apple about the security flaw it exploited to break inside the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook in part, because the bureau says it didn't buy the rights to the technical details of the hacking tool.
"Currently we do not have enough technical information about any vulnerability that would permit any meaningful review," said Amy Hess, the FBI's executive assistant director for science and technology.
$1.3m and no source code?
The FBI will not have to disclose the name of the vendor that it paid to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists:
A federal court ruled yesterday that the FBI does not have to disclose either the name of the vendor used or price the government paid to hack into the iPhone SE of mass shooter Syed Farook, according to ZDNet. The device became embroiled in a heated national controversy and legal standoff last year when Apple refused to help the FBI develop a backdoor into it for the purpose of obtaining sensitive information on Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, both of whom participated in the terrorist attack that left 14 dead in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.
The Justice Department originally filed a lawsuit against Apple to compel it to participate by creating a special version of its mobile operating system, something Apple was vehemently against because of the risk such a tool posed to users. But very soon after, the government withdrew from the case when a third-party vendor secretly demonstrated to the FBI a workable method to bypass the iPhone's security system. Three news organizations — the Associated Press, Vice News, and USA Today — filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in September 2016 to reveal details of the hacking method used. Because it was not clear how many phones the workaround could be used on, and whether the FBI could use it surreptitiously in the future, the lawsuit was seeking information that would be pertinent to the public and security researchers around the globe.
Previously: Washington Post: The FBI Paid "Gray Hat(s)", Not Cellebrite, for iPhone Unlock
FBI Can't Say How It Hacked IPhone 5C
Meeting Cellebrite - Israel's Master Phone Crackers
Cellebrite Appears to Have Been Hacked
Senator Dianne Feinstein Claims That the FBI Paid $900,000 to Break Into a Locked iPhone
Related: FBI Resists Revealing its Tor User Identification Methods in Court
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:16AM (3 children)
If the investigators can't work with the copious amount of evidence they're given, then it's time for some new investigators who can. Of course, Barr isn't going anywhere soon (though maybe he'll get the boot next year or do the resign after election thing). Too bad.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:46AM (2 children)
FBI Chief Calls for National Talk Over Encryption vs. Safety [soylentnews.org]
DOJ (Rod Rosenstein): Strong Encryption That We Don't Have Access to is “Unreasonable” [soylentnews.org]
FBI: End-to-End Encryption Problem "Infects" Law Enforcement and Intelligence Community [soylentnews.org]
U.S. Attorney General William Barr Demands Backdoored Encryption [soylentnews.org]
This position is par for the course for the DoJ and FBI. You can probably find examples of most FBI Directors and Attorneys General since the 90s sperging over encryption. There has just been more noise in the last few years as adoption of encryption in consumer products and popular software is way up.
It is not like they don't investigate despite encryption-related obstacles, it's just that any opportunity to push the anti-encryption agenda is seized, even if they have to lie and twist [archive.is].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:10PM (1 child)
And I'm kind of OK with that. It's their job to advocate for the interests of their organization (so long as it's constitutional).
And it's our job to tell them to fuck off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:55PM
purposely weakening encryption is not constitutional. it is by definition, sedition. if i were in charge i would start charging fuckers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:26AM (4 children)
Protecting the data of criminals and terrorists (by making the devices actually secure) has been one of their more admirable moves.
Even if this would protect anyone (a "lone wolf" attacker's phone doesn't matter), the goal remains incompatible with user security and freedom. FOAD.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:41AM (2 children)
I would agree with that sentiment if I believed it to be true, but anytime I see this kind of shit from Apple I see crocodile tears and free marketing. Apple has NSA plants and Jewish spies that insert exploits and/or sell exploits to Israeli companies the feds can pay to have phones unlocked. I'd even go so far to say that Apple has a "nudge-nudge, wink wink" deal with law enforcement to maintain the charade. We don't even know if Apple straight-up hands them the keys to the backdoor without even a warrant with maintenance of the charade as part of the contract.
I thought their iPhone commercial was pretty hilarious -- touting the benefits of its privacy and security literally at the same time it showed the phone's creepy tri-camera looking directly outward.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:11AM
You're on the same page as that AC further down the page. What we have seen is the DoJ and FBI take Apple, Microsoft, and others to court multiple times, and a decades-long propaganda campaign against encryption that has been largely unsuccessful. The boomer spooks aren't as smart as you think they are. Just look at Comey.
Companies do collect vulnerabilities for sale to the FBI and NSA, as is to be expected at this point. Inserting vulnerabilities with an inside man is also a good idea, but that's not something that can be counted on since a code review process could squash that.
Put 1 or 16 cameras on the back of my smartphone, the number doesn't really affect its ability to record embarrassing moments, including surreptitious recording of audio (store it in your pocket with a microphone app recording). Multi-camera modules let ordinary folks rival pro photographers since software can handle the focusing, zoom, image stabilization, light sensitivity, etc. Any trypophobia [soylentnews.org] caused is a bonus.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:48PM
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I absolutely don't believe that Apple really cares about user security, but whatever reason they actually care about it for ($$), the intersection of our interests still winds up in a positive outcome for us, the users.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:21PM
Call me a cynic (go ahead, I am one, so...), but it occurs to me that it is probable that Apple will break iPhone encryption, and likely already has, many times.
The charade that the FBI and Apple are probably (IMHO) putting on here presents a circumstance where government targets are placing trust in the iPhone encryption system that is unwarranted. That trust is entirely based on the "we won't help" public claims. They don't actually know this, it's just what they're being told through the media and various talking heads from both ends of the issue.
WRT this particular event, it doesn't seem unlikely that the FBI and Apple would use this incident, which is relatively unimportant in the big picture TBH, to highlight the idea that iPhones present an unbreakable privacy wall to the government.
This state of affairs would be of considerable advantage to agencies that want that information. So there's motive. Means and opportunity as well: Apple obviously can do this if they choose to.
Apple, for its part, has repeatedly and completely shown on other fronts that it doesn't give a shit about its customers, only about revenue. Hence my considerable lack of confidence in the FBI and Apple's claims here.
In the end, if you want something to be secure, use paper and a pencil or pen, and keep the paper secure. The only guaranteed secrets are the ones only you know. If such a thing is digital, and you're depending on a 3rd party to keep your secret(s), the doors open lightning fast and in many directions to compromise.
--
It's not really how I look that reveals my age.
It's using complete sentences when I text.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DrkShadow on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:34AM (5 children)
It sounds like Apple has not refused to help. It sounds like Apple doesn't have any additional ways to help. it sounds like apple provided all the help that they're able to provide.
(Score: 1, Troll) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:40AM (3 children)
it sounds like apple provided all the help that they're able to provide.
That's what they say. They don't want it widely known that they do have a master key. A certain 3rd party can provide plausible deniability. I believe that happened once before...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:43AM (2 children)
Forgot to ask, are they just as protective in China?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:34AM
I vaguely remember reading that Android has different behavior if you set the local or language to zh-cn, but I can't remember the details.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:23AM
Or for John Smith instead of Syed Farook/Mohammed Alshamrani.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:11PM
Does it? I didn't hear anywhere in TFS where Apple said they CANNOT decrypt the phone, just that they WILL NOT help decrypt the phone. These are substantively different.
(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.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:57AM (4 children)
70% of the Saudi students had child porn on their computers
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:18AM
I'm sure that's just the FBI's way of admitting they couldn't find any legitimate reasons to kick these guys out of the country. Just say you found cp, and nobody will dare question it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:39AM (2 children)
That was just some family photos.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:00PM
Anons gonna anon :)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @09:37AM
But a lot of us from the GenX/Early Millenial generation probably have photos of us that qualify. The barrier for what constitutes child porn has gotten so low that those laugh, chuckle, embarassment photos every kids parents had a binder of are now the incriminating evidence needed to put them away and get them labelled an offender. Or even ourselves because children can be tried as adults for distributing it themselves, or *GASP* being an adult and deciding to publish their own nude pictures from childhood!
Meanwhile as we saw with Epstein, the British Parliament Orphan Abuse/MI5 scandal (which almost nobody seems to know about, as it was glossed over in favor of the Pitcairn Paedophile scandal..), and a few other lesser cases before and since, the government, wealthy individuals, as well as a various of children related industries all have plants in them to help groom, funnel and protect them while stripping away rights from the average citizen all to protect the sheep from the sheep and rarely the far ranging wolf, while meanwhile keeping them all complacent as the wolfpack hunts its favorite succulent flesh from amongst those too weak and small minded to protect themselves, because 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN!'
Do your part to think of the children and say to giving up their rights to a freer future just to pretend you are protecting them with some laws that will almost never be applied to the real serial abusers and predators. Epstein only got a year as punishment for the blackmail videos, imagine what someone even wealthier and more connected would have got?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:10PM
Apple would sure like us to believe they can't. Nobody is really gullible enough to believe that they won't under any circumstances.
With product quality in the shitter for years now, Apple's only selling point anymore is that they don't monetize customer data. That their product is a premium product that you won't be paying for with ad subsidies or data sharing agreements. Claiming that they can't even decrypt the data on your phone only bolsters this selling point.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?