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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.]
Another Take on FBI vs. Apple
There's a plenty of reason to believe that Apple complying with the FBI order is bad policy, it's legally shaky, and at least one of the people who makes the strongest arguments in this direction is now voting on a secret government board? What the heck is going on here?
What's going on is Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.
Had Justice Scalia not died unexpectedly a few days ago (notably before the Apple/FBI dustup) and had the FBI pursued the case with it landing finally in the Supreme Court, well the FBI would have probably won the case 5-4. Maybe not, but probably.
With Justice Scalia dead and any possible replacement locked in a Republican-induced coma, the now eight-member Supreme Court has nominally four liberal and four conservative justices but at least 1.5 of those conservatives (Justice Kennedy and sometimes Chief Justice Roberts) have been known to turn moderate on certain decisions. This smaller court, which will apparently judge all cases for the next couple years, is likely to be more moderate than the Scalia Court ever was.
So if you are a President who is a lawyer and former teacher of constitutional law and you've come over time to see that this idea of secret backdoors into encrypted devices is not really a good idea, but one that's going to come up again and again pushed by nearly everyone from the other political party (and even a few from your own) wouldn't right now be the best of all possible times to kinda-sorta fight this fight all the way to the Supreme Court and lose?
If it doesn't go all the way to the Supremes, there's no chance to set a strong legal precedent and this issue will come back again and again and again. That's what I am pretty sure is happening.
takyon: Apple's deadline to respond to the court's order has been extended from Tuesday to Friday. Twitter, Facebook, and Steve Wozniak have expressed support for Apple's position. Here's a blog post describing how Apple could potentially comply with the FBI's request.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday February 20 2016, @01:08AM
The big thing I get out of this is that Apple seems too have the ability to push OS updates to people's phones without their consent. They really should fix that, at which point they can just say "Sorry, can't do it".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Dunbal on Saturday February 20 2016, @01:21AM
The big thing I get out of this is that Apple is spying on you. From another article [buzzfeed.com]: "It was then that they [Apple] discovered that the Apple ID password associated with the iPhone had been changed. (The FBI claims this was done by someone at the San Bernardino Health Department.) Had that password not been changed, the executives said, the government would not need to demand the company create a “backdoor” to access the iPhone"
So if the Apple ID isn't changed, Apple doesn't even need a backdoor to access your iPhone. Good to know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Saturday February 20 2016, @04:38AM
This brings up an aspect that I had been wondering about the last couple of days. The iPhone was property of San Bernardino County. It is/was a work phone. I think it unlikely that Farook used the phone for any personal or terrorist dealings. That phone was for Health Department business only, so would he risk his plans or contacts by using a company phone? Plus the fact that they destroyed both their personal phones and the hard drive of their computer but left the SBCHD phone intact seems to indicate they felt there was no information on it.
Then there is the apparent change of password by the SBCHD which begs the question: Does the SBCHD have the current password? If so then the FBI should be after the SBCHD and not Apple.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by basicbasicbasic on Saturday February 20 2016, @08:40AM
I don't see how you interpreted that to mean Apple is spying on you; the sentence directly before it says "Apple sent trusted engineers to try that method, the executives said, but they were unable to do it. It was then that they discovered ... "
Anti-Apple or lack of coffee?
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Saturday February 20 2016, @09:16PM
I mean, there's other reasonable possibilities. Maybe they found the old password though other channels, an email or a note or something? I mean, otherwise, what you're suggesting is that Apple is spying on you, and was giving information to the government, only to not be giving information now.
I still want to know why, when the TLAs have all this ability to monitor everything that goes into or out of the phone, they're making such a big deal about needing to crack the phone itself.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Saturday February 20 2016, @09:18PM
This is of course assuming there's not some nuance in the words there that I don't quite pick up, not being an Apple phone user.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2016, @04:44AM
That is built in as a last ditch effort to recover a phone. It is not a secret and "Geniuses" do it multiple times a day. In fact, I did it for a friend whose children locked them out of their phone. You just press the home and power buttons when starting it and connect it to iTunes via USB. For more details, Google the term "DFU" or "iphone recovery mode."