This isn’t a easy place for me to be in — the Islamist terrorists who slaughtered 14 people on Dec 2, 2015, 14 people who worked for the same employer I do, San Bernardino County, left behind a cell phone the FBI has been unable to break into. In a startling development, a federal judge has ordered Apple to invent a backdoor key to by-pass the security measures on the phone. Apple is resisting… and this letter makes clear that the stakes go far beyond this case.
Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.
The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control. […]
The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.
The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe. […]
Rather than asking for legislative action through Congress, the FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority.
The government would have us remove security features and add new capabilities to the operating system, allowing a passcode to be input electronically. This would make it easier to unlock an iPhone by “brute force,” trying thousands or millions of combinations with the speed of a modern computer.
The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.
Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.
We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.
While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.
Good on Tim Cook
This is what happens when you apply the Rough Road–sign model to fighting the war on terror. Yes, of course we’d like to have some prosecutions and convictions in the San Bernardino case, inasmuch as it is clear that the jihadists there did not act without some assistance. And, yes, there probably is some useful information to be had from that iPhone. But there is something deeply unseemly about a gigantic and gigantically powerful national-security apparatus’s being stymied by ordinary consumer electronics and then putting a gun to the head of Apple executives and demanding that they do Uncle Stupid’s job for him.
You know what would be better than prosecuting those who helped the San Bernardino jihadists? Stopping them, i.e., for the Men in Black to do their goddamned jobs. An arranged marriage to a Pakistani woman who spent years doing . . . something . . . in Saudi Arabia? Those two murderous misfits had more red flags on them than Bernie Sanders’s front yard on May Day, and the best minds in American law enforcement and intelligence did precisely squat to stop their rampage. Having failed to do its job, the federal government now seeks even more power — the power to compel Apple to write code rendering the security measures in its products useless — as a reward for its failure.
Hear, hear.
good on you sister
you surprised me with this one
(maybe not as much as apple surprised me)
You know what would really help law enforcement is if everyone had a device they carried with them that would track everything they did, so when someone came under scrutiny, for whatever reason, the authorities could access the device without a warrant, even without the device holders knowledge, and learn every intimate detail of any citizens life.
What? That’s what you’re talking about? Oh, never mind…
Forever Dumb
By BetaBurg
Let’s open the file, read each case for a while,
Freedom grows moldy with our hopes on trial.
We voted for the best, but elected the worst,
Do these RINOs give a damn or not?
Help us move to the right, or just get out of our way
We gave them some power; we can take it away
Squatting on the last hill, afraid to take the red pill
The banner’s trod in the mud.
Can you imagine if they’d fought and won?
Defied the serpent and defended the sun!
We’d offer them the honors a hero deserves,
In stead they break and they run.
Forever dumb,
I’m meant to be forever dumb.
Do I really want to see the real world?
Collapsing around me?
Forever dumb,
Shut down my brain, forever dumb.
Keep me cooped up in the dark forever..
Forever dumb.
Some words are like fog that obscures the land
Some words trace vows but in shifting sand
Sooner or later you’ll see it’s all dung
It’s damned hard to stay dumb.
It hurts like hell to embrace a cause
And see it strangled by pointless laws
Your heroes have sold you for a two-book deal,
Despair is poisoning your outlook
So many promises pulled away,
So many bribes and deceits at play
So many lies and illusions to parse
It’s a pitiful farce.
Forever dumb,
They hope we’ll stay forever dumb
Pull a lever in November, but not remember
Why we pulled it at all.
Forever dumb,
So hard to be forever dumb.
Do you want to be a tool forever?
Forever dumb?
Forever dumb
Mushrooms are oh so bloody dumb
Do you really want to vote for nothing
All over and over?
I’m out of dumb,
I cannot find my loyal dumb
Here’s my stop, you pull your own damned lever.
Forever
Or never…
Greetings:
Having worked for so long in the printing industry, I’ve appreciated MACs since the early ’80s but never to the point of standing in line outside an Apple store for anything so, forgive me, but I’m not yet ready to jump on the Tim Cook wagon at this point.
One of my more recently burgeoning phobias is the Natives-Volcano-Virgins scenario. I’m concerned that America and the capital “W” West are slipping backward into those long lost days when the majority becomes inured to the sacrifices of a few while both continue to whistle past the graveyard that is Islam.
I’m guessing but, just like the anti-gun rights Rosie O’Donnell’s personnel protection team, I’m thinking Tim Cook is in a pretty good situation in that regard so as not to activate Apple’s succession planning any time soon. So, when he stands up and wraps himself in the Constitution and our current President’s version of American values, I get skeptical in that Bronx boy kind of way, because I don’t recall very much of either in Apple’s corporate history especially in regard to, say, manufacturing in America.
I’ll grant that I don’t understand the technological arguments about the why or wherefore of penetrating the encryption. The depth of my thinking in that regard is “Can’t this be done off line ???”. But Apple is always about Apple and if Tim Cook stood up and said “We developed this product and sold it to our customers because that’s the business we’re in and how we make our livings. Islam is not part of our business plan.” I might have a bit more respect for him.
As a former altar boy with two subsequent years of high school Latin under my educational belt, it’s “Islam delenda est” for me. I expect no intentional help in that regard from Tim Cook, our current President, or all those “Progressives” so well seeded throughout all those bureaucracies to which we have become both subservient and dependent.
11B40 makes a lot of sense. If we don’t want to have to change how we live our lives, we’re going to have to make other people change how they live their lives.
Of course, that cuts any number of ways. Including for those of us who do want to change how the rest of us live our lives. And not just because that option is easier.
I think I would support the Central Government’s effort if they agree not to take possession of the code Apple develops to get at the information on that individual phone and, also, that Apple agree to destroy the code after it had been used on said phone. Further, those engineers who develop the code would have to sign very strict confidentiality agreements.
I believe it would be Constitutional for the courts to oversee the implementation of such a scheme, directly or via an appointed independent person.
[I propose this as an old COBOL and SQL Programmer, but would like to hear what Dicentra’s view is – or that of anyone else here who is involved in IT.]
Apple genetics. The code unleashed.
The only problem with the very reasonable compromise Bob suggests is that the law isn’t always reasonable when it comes to legal precedents.
Ah, Bob, do you REALLY think they want it just for this ONE case of terrorism, that happened months ago?
I might be on the government’s side, if they had been locking up people like Hillary when they abused their authority and real the law. As is, I trust that this WILL be misused with no consciousness by our government.
It’s who they are, it’s what they do…
And “break” the law.
Bob
And that’s the rub … the FBI isn’t sending the phone to Apple to unlock … the fed judge is ordering them to develop the key and hand it over — we’ll use it just this once PINKY PROMISE.
It’s like needing to break into house X but having the locksmith deliver a master key that will get into not just X’s house but into the homes of a million other people in the city.
Greetings:
And, at the risk of abusing your hospitality, I would offer this:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/02/apple-wont-unlock-san-bernardino-jihad-killers-iphone-but-unlocked-phones-for-the-feds-70-times-before
What’s so magic about this one case? Why wouldn’t Apple be compelled to crack every phone where any law enforcement is able to obtain a warrant?
If the court can order Apple to write the crypto-cracking code the government demands, why would Apple not be obligated to write the camera/microphone surveillance code the government demands when a wiretapping warrant is obtained?
Thanks for everyone’s comments and to you 11B40 for the very informative link.
Here are the two commas I forgot to include: , , .
I just saw a “news” item that quotes a source from a company that I may or may not have previously worked for who said that Apple could build and push the policy for a single, locked, device in an “afternoon”.
What planet that afternoon is on, I have no idea. I do know that it’s probably easier for apple to help crack the iCloud and iTunes account than it is to try and brute force the phone itself. That would also, probably give the Feds all the info and access they would need. But that’s not up to me, and good on Apple for not complying with this bullshit order.
If the gov’t wants to compete, the gov’t is going to have to come up with a better way of cracking phones than brute force.
Tim Cook is right.
I’ll grant that I don’t understand the technological arguments about the why or wherefore of penetrating the encryption.
Then please refrain from crafting an elaborate opinion on the matter, see voo play.
IT security is a damned tough business: we spend a LOT of our time writing patches to harden our code against the latest exploit. We will never keep up with the viruses and worms and rootkits and cracked ciphers (SHA1 just bit the dust) that are constantly being crafted by everyone from 4-chan’s script kiddies to North Korea, Iran, and China.
Screw the FBI for demanding that Apple or any other company compromise their hard-won security. They don’t need the iPhone data to crack the terrorists’ cells: they need to use COMMON EFFING SENSE to profile and stop this kind if shit from happening again.
I don’t care what Apple has or has not done in the past. I don’t care if Tim Cook is being disingenous or sincere or if he’s poised to disembowel himself to prove that he intends to stand on principle.
The FBI is wrong.
Dead wrong.
Screw them sideways with a running chainsaw.
GOD, what gall.
Greetings, dicentra: ( @ February 18, 2016 at 3:16 pm )
So it really can’t be done off line ???
So it really can’t be done off line ???
The phone is carefully organized sand. There’s no line to be off of.
This is rather interesting:
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-ill-decrypt-san-bernardino-phone-for-free-2016-2?op=1
I don’t have any current Apple devices, so I’m not sure I have a full picture of what it is the feds are trying to do. Is iOS 9 fully encrypted, or does it allow the end user to create an encrypted partition or something?
If Apple implemented that encryption correctly, neither they nor anyone else should have the ability to disable or circumvent it.
But it’s still a digital device. If I wanted to guess the code needed to enable decryption, I might explore the feasibility of making bitwise copies and running them on an emulator. That can be guarded against, clearly, but I’m not sure if Apple took steps to do so.
curiouser & curiouser
oh my
San Bernardino Shooter’s Apple iCloud Password Changed While in Government Possession
http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-shooters-apple-id-passcode-changed-government/story?id=37066070
Ha! I just saw that new. That actually explains a lot. Also, always back your iPhone up to an encrypted HD, NOT the cloud. Evidently there’s reasons.