@InfinityMan - Wow aren’t you special. Just because someone doesn’t agree with you doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to post on here. If you don’t want to read others opinions then perhaps you shouldn’t be on CC.
Apple. What the FBI is requesting is not only a form of LEO overreach which should be concerning in its own right, I also agree with Apple that creating a backdoor could have negative unintended consequence in terms of iphone security for everyone…especially the law abiding majority.
IME working in IT and dealing with work issued computers/electronics, if the device/internet access is owned by the employer, the employee has practically no reasonable expectation of privacy while using employer owned devices/internet access.
One common practice in companies and public sector agencies is to do periodic audits of the device’s stored contents and internet traffic to ensure the employee hasn’t used it for illegal activities or spending excess amounts of time on non-work related matters.
Granted, this can be taken too far by some supervisors as one friend working for a state employer found when he was dressed down for “excessive internet usage” even though the IT audits clearly proved all that usage was for legitimate work-related purposes*. Turns out that supervisor had issues with giving other employees the third degree which eventually factored into her dismissal.
- Part of his job was to research laws related to his agency and how it impacts concerns of constituents who call in.
Apple. Yes, I realize this is a criminal case where having access to the phone would likely give them information on co-conspirators, if they were working with ISIS, etc, but the problem is what the government wanted was not a one shot thing. One of the issues with IOS, if i read it correctly, is if you try and guess the password too many times, the phone wipes out the data on the phone (it doesn’t just lock it down from what I recall reading). What they wanted was Apple to come up with something to decrypt the password from the reverse hashing they use, which would be a general algorithm that they could in theory use to read the password stored on the phone that is encrypted, and break it, and it would apply to any apple phone they seized…and from what I understand, it was not just the Iphone 5 they wanted, they also want either a program or a back door put into Apple’s phones to allow this kind of cracking.
If this was just a one time thing with this phone, I would be okay with it. My problem is such a program would allow a government agency the ability to decrypt phones they seized, and if they claim it is terrorism, to do it without a warrant (The FISA court is a joke, it is stuffed with judges who philosophically think that defendent’s rights mean nothing). Not to mention if such a backdoor exists you could have actors, like the Chinese Government, stealing it or others using it for less than good purposes, if Snowden’s revelations showed anything, it is that the spirit of good ole J.Edgar Hoover is still out there. The overall problem is that ensuring security or prosecuting criminals has been the M.O of nefarious states and people as long as I assume people had such things as states, using those as an excuse to create or maintain power.
Apple.
And what happens if they did and a different country wants Apple to do the same for them?
Apple, no question.
@JAMCAFE The “bad guys” have had a leg up ever since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Ordering Apple to de-encrypt opens the door really wide to the bad guys.
OK. Just read up on that spftware. Of course it costs money for the county or a company to put that on every phone, but should be included in the procurement. The employee has the ability to turn off the feature, however, and if nobody is constantly monitoring (which would be another cost), the County would not necessarily know that. Or not know it in time to intervene. Still seems like with a government or employer issued phone, there should be a back door.
I’m on Apple side. What can’t the FBI tech guys unlock the phone? I know people who are able to unlock and jailbreak iPhone. Why is it so hard for the FBI to do without Apple?
Apple. As much as I hate to see bad guys go unpunished, there are other ways of finding co-conspirators. The FBI is just going to have to engage in some old-fashioned detective work, the kind they did before smart phones existed.
Apple, for the same reason Massmomm just stated.
Historically, companies that have built back doors into their firmware or software have gone kaput soon after the vulnerability was discovered. I think Apple wisely would like to avoid this fate.
I’m impressed with Apple’s encryption ability-the best and the brightest of government cybersecurity people evidently can’t break it. Maybe the feds can hire the people who created Stuxnet…
Like @gouf78 says, how will Apple respond if Her Majesty’s government, or any EU government or the Chinese government demands the same thing for criminal investigations in those countries? Will Apple comply since those countries do not have the same type of constitutional protection here, or will Apple be willing to walk away from those markets?
Apple.
I’ve read that if this had happened in Britain, that Apple would be required to develop such additional software and would be prevented from speaking publicly about this issue. Surprised the FBI doesn’t find a similar case in a country with laws more friendly to the gov’t.
DS does competitive hacking. He’s read up on how iPhone encryption works. He believes it is a substantially more difficult issue than hacking an Android passcode (takes about 30 minutes). He is surprised that the FBI hasn’t set up a “game” for hackers to solve the problems involved on a generic (non-terrorist) iPhone and then apply the winning solution to the iPhone in question. They would have to provide a number of locked iPhones and access to substantial computing power, but DS thinks it’s possible. However, he’s not sure how many of the uber-hackers (he’s not one of those, but knows some) would take the challenge, because most (not all) are strongly on the Apple side.
There are competitions with challenges related to hacking gaming platforms.
Apple, for all the reasons listed. Not to mention, they hardly have compelling evidence that there’s a conspiracy here that needs to be unravelled. The scary truth seems to be that we have any number of independant actors who are inspired by ISIS, but not directly connected to them.
I know people who can break into IPhones. I don’t know why the FBI is such a hard time will it. Or maybe I just know the wrong type of people. lol
Definitely Apple.
Despite what the Government says, this isn’t about just one iPhone…
@sensation:
Or they claim they can break into Iphones, and in reality are BS artists trying to look cool shrug.
The other thing to keep in mind is what the FBI is attempting to do here. For example, it is possible to put something on an iphone that would copy any texts the person had, or send the contact list for the phone, to someone outside. If the Iphone is on a wifi network, if they have cracked the network, they may be able to intercept traffic.
What the FBI is trying to do is crack the password. The standard way to do that is brute force, to try all kinds of combinations, but on most systems these days they have so called hack limits where if you reach that, the phone gets locked up, and apparently Apple if that happens will wipe the data from the phone.
What the FBI wants is the password. The password on an Apple phone is stored via a so called one way hash, that basically uses seeming random elements to encrypt the password into the db. When the client logs in, the password they type is hashed, and it is compared to the password hashed on the device, and if it is the same, they can log in (not an expert on crypto, but pretty certain this is what they did). To try and crack the password, you would need the hashing algorithm, and would have to try a ton of combinations to see if you can get the same encrypted password out of that hash that is on the device. Common ways to do this are feed a dictionary in and compare, but that effort would be massive if the password is any good.
What they want Apple to do is reverse engineer the hashing algorithm, which part of its security is the users of it don’t know what it is doing entirely from what I am led to believe. And that is the problem, because that same algorithm is used in every Apple phone as far as I know, which would mean it would be able to crack any Apple Iphone using the same method.
Besides the cost and time of doing this, there is the very real fear of “who is watching the watcher?”. If there is one thing that time has proven, it is that law enforcement and other branches of government, not to mention private people with ill intentions, end up abusing this kind of power, it is just too tempting. When Obama came out and defended the NSA and said “there are people watching over their activities, there are safeguards”, I was really angry at him, because he is old enough to remember what J.Edgar Hoover did. More importantly, with Snowden’s revelations, we also saw where law enforcement was asking the NSA for the metadata they intercepted to use in looking for ‘criminal patterns’, which violates the 4th amendment, since they didn’t have a warrant, and the NSA operated without them, so it would be a fishing expedition.
Good write up musicprnt. Your comment about the NSA reminded me what a co-worker said about the phone - the FBI should just ask the NSA. The NSA probably connected to, and made a copy of the phone during the shootout. (generally kidding of course)
Believe it or not I actually discussed this with James Carville and a computer consultant who was trying to broker a resolution to this.
When I said I think I’m in the apple camp James carville nearly lost his mind. His take was that a judge found probable cause and issued a warrant…so open the phone.
It is not clear if dead people have privacy rights.
Computer guy says one issue is if the fbi can compel them, so could china, where they’re manufactured.
I’m usually for more privacy than less and less government intervention into private business.
I am with Apple, for the record.
I think that the FBI is using this as a test case. In reality, all they really need to do is steal/acquire Apple’s code signing certificate. Two fake updates later, they have complete access to the phone. I would be surprised if this was beyond their capabilities.
I’m not always a tinfoil hat guy, but I think that they have the means to open the phone and have already extracted the data. I think that this is the “best case” case for establishing the government’s right to get anything on a phone. A dead terrorist? Why shouldn’t we let them have access “just this one time.”
I don’t think they have broken it yet, if they had they would have done it and not mentioned it, and then when something like this they would get a warrant (or not), and simply extract the data.