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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
(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.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(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.