heard an interesting suggestion on the radio this morning. I think it was Senator Issa suggesting that asking apple for the ability to make a copy of the phone. Since the FBI has the ability to but manpower into a job like this, the FBI could make 10, 20, or even 200 copies of the phone over an over until they brute force the password. Sure it would take time, and even if the tool made it into the wild, the effort involved likely eclipses the resources of the average criminal.
Lol. It would only take less than a thousand phones (the number of possible 4-digit codes minus the obvious combos like 0000 etc.) 
Apple can bundle-price them for the FBI at a good discount.
And even if it is a 6 digit code, its only 100000 max. This is would be a trivial task, given that the FBI does things like reassemble airplanes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800
Too late to edit - “fewer than 1000 phones.”
FBI.
If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason to worry. That’s also my stance with NSA. I don’t really consider it a breach in privacy if some analyst that I’m never going to know of or speak to gets into my phone.
Oh and let’s not pretend like the government doesn’t have these capabilities already to hack in. They probably have already gotten into the phone, but need “permission” from Apple to be able to use that info in court.
This won’t work, and the idea has been debunked elsewhere. The files on more recent iPhones, including the 5c model which is the phone that was used by the terrorist, are encrypted using a combination of the password and a hardware key which is physically created as part of each individual iPhone when that phone is manufactured. In order to read any data on the phone, you need both the password and that specific hardware key. The key doesn’t exist anywhere else but on that phone.
Creating copies of the phone’s data therefore won’t help.
“If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason to worry. That’s also my stance with NSA. I don’t really consider it a breach in privacy if some analyst that I’m never going to know of or speak to gets into my phone.”
I have heard that plenty, that if you have nothing to hide, then you should have no problem for example if someone searches your car or home without a warrant, because, after all, what do you have to hide? I hate to tell people who believe this, but that was the line of every tyranical regime out there, people who grew up in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union can tell you all about that, how those who weren’t happy about the repression must be anti state, because, after all, what did they have to worry about? Take a look at China and the way they control things, and it becomes obvious why such a statement is dangerous (and yep, In China, they tell people things like that)
You have reason to worry because just the threat of your privacy being violated is enough to kowtow people into subservience, it makes it for example so that people might not want to have an honest conversation about something for fear of it being out there.Read up on history, read about the McCarthy era that revisionist historians are trying to turn into something glorious, and you get an idea of what can happen, when something like loving Russian classical music could put you under suspicion, or someone who advocated for individual rights (those communists). what might seem innocuous can end up being used against someone…
But more importantly, that right to privacy is forefront to the individual rights we enjoy, and that statement trivializes that. If people have no right of privacy, if they are supposed to reduce things in all aspects of their life to being only have things that in no possible way, shape or form that could cause problems, you would have one heck of an empty life. An analogy to this comes to me from a famous case of suppressing free speech, in a case where there was a free speech issue that revolved around one of the oldest excuses to suppress things, to ‘protect children’ (I don’t remember what the case was, if it was a book, a magazine article, I don’t recall). In his opinion, Brandeis said that we cannot have a society lowered down to the level of children, that in doing so we would be reduced to a state of perpetual stasis, that while protecting children was important, you cannot do so by reducing society to the level of children. With something like the right to privacy, whether digital or in our homes, that is ceding control to outside people if we allow things like the NSA program or something like the FBI or whoever being able to crack open phones and whatnot, it puts a lot of power into the hands of faceless, nameless people whose intentions we don’t know, and it is in that that fear happens. It is why I became furious when after Snowden’s revelations, Obama made this big deal about how there were controls, how the information could not be used against innocent people, and the reality was it could be and probably had been used.
Put it this way, what I have on my phone would likely make anyone reading it go to sleep, texting about frustrations at work, difficulties commuting, picking up stuff from the store on the way home, and I still wouldn’t want anyone reading it, because it is my life, my relationships, my thoughts, and while I have nothing to be afraid of legally or even otherwise, it is still mine.
So, you have no information about your finances on your phone? Nothing that accesses your bank accounts or credit cards?
Maybe you have information about your health and medical records. Or connectivity to a home security system, or to various devices in your home–lights, or the ability to start up an oven or other appliance. Maybe you don’t have that yet…but you will.
Then there’s a new generation of medical devices where doctors will be able to monitor, for example, a pacemaker without needing an office visit; they’ll just be able to look at the data streamed from the app in your phone. Oh yes, and self-driving cars.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Now, maybe you’re not worried about an NSA analyst looking at this data. But you might be more concerned if you look at the government’s history with the records of millions of Americans whose personal data–Social Security numbers, medical records, financial records, and more–were collected as part of background investigations for government jobs, or for access to government facilities. Those data were stored, unencrypted, without even a password, on a hard drive which was left in a government employee’s car. The car was burgled, the hard drive stolen. Every one of those individuals now is at risk of having their identities stolen.
Of course, cybercriminals and hackers wouldn’t need to wait for a lucky stroke of luck like this. They can just use whatever tools are around that will allow them to break into a phone. They don’t need a warrant. They just need a way in.
Of course you have something to hide. We all do. We’re not talking about crimes. We’re talking about the data that all of us have, that all of us need to keep secret or restricted.
I support the FBI. They have a court-order to obtain the information.
I support NSA.and think Snowden has committed treason.
I am opposed to torture.
Our government folks working in law enforcement and terrorism don’t scare me. (Though if I was Black or Muslim, they would).
I am happy to sacrifice a little privacy to save human life. Screw what whoever said in the OPs quote.
With regard to privacy, Google, Yahoo. and Facebook (CollegeConfidential?, LOL) scare me more than the FBI or NSA because they are trying to make money from my personal information not prevent bad guys from killing multitudes of people.
The whole thought of “if you have nothing to hide then don’t worry” is silly. I much prefer “I have nothing to hide, so there is no reason to look”
Then I hope you have no nudes on your phone. According to Snowden, NSA employees abused and used their positions to stalk their girlfriends and exes, as well as look through hundreds of “private, sensitive images” (in other words, nudes) that belonged to people not suspected of doing anything (people not under investigation).
Even if you don’t have those types of images, you surely would be creeped out by the fact that some random dude can look through your phone and peruse at will your private pictures, text messages and correspondence (and download them as well). It is the equivalent of having a peeping tom. While there is nothing wrong or illegal with my changing my clothes or taking a shower or just moving about my house, I would be mighty displeased if I find out someone was watching me do so without my knowledge.
@infinityman:
Not to mention that the Snowden case pointed out something else, that the NSA and other government agencies are outsourcing work, Snowden was not an employee of the NSA, he was a contractor. And from everything that came out of Snowden, it became pretty apparent that oversight of these programs is not what is claimed, among other things, that Snowden had access to the kind of information he did, even though he wasn’t an employee. How hard would it be for an FBI employee or an NSA agent to decide to go rogue with all of this? You think someone at the FBI wouldn’t get their hands on something designed to open any Iphone (if that is possible), and wouldn’t be tempted to sell it, and do you really think the FBI would make it that hard to do that? I don’t, if there is one thing that has come out in recent years, security, even at the secret agencies and such, isn’t so great.
@musicprnt @Infinityman @SlitheyTove Even still, that’s not that big of a deal to me. If someone is accessing something that is tangible, not physical and odds are, I will never meet the person accessing it or even know when it is accessed, it doesn’t phase me. If we’re being realistic, the government has probably already snooped through your phones and finances.
What’s it to you if it has zero impact on your life? If some random data analyst gets into my phone and sees how many pics I have stored of Harry Styles or sees my gossipy texts with my friends, it doesn’t matter.
The government knows better than the people in my opinion. They know about the things that threaten your livelihood that you are completely unaware of. There are many cases where they stop bad things before they happen and you have no clue.
It’s better to have something and not need it, than to need something and not have it. Rights are meaningless when you’re dead.
Let me blunt here: this information can and has been used to extort its innocent owners into complying with the government (or at least a branch of it). If the NSA wants you to do something like say, not publish an article that damages their reputation or exposes some illegal practice or another, they can coerce you into complying by using information stolen from your phone. The government has ways to turn things (in this case, data) which seem harmless to you into effective weapons. It isn’t only information stored on your phone they can see, but your online activities. If you made a post on CC, they will know. If you purchase something online - even using a “highly secure and reliable website” like Amazon - they will know. If you visit a porn site, they will know. And they can use this information against you. It is an effective suppression tool. I heartily wish this was me being paranoid or being a conspiracy theorist. It has happened. And it can happen to you, your next door neighbor or even your family.
Tracking suspected terrorists - controversial as the methods employed are - is one thing. Tracking innocent civilians is another. There is a reason the Director of National Intelligence lied under oath to Congress: he knew what the NSA was doing was illegal (and it is illegal for a good reason). What the FBI is asking for is the kind of access I outlined above (mainly through weakening encryption, although I doubt that is the extent of it). How long do you think before an Agent uses it for a personal purpose, like tracking their wives or hacking into their celebrity crush’s phone, or even monitoring their favorite athlete’s private info? Or before a corrupt official (yes they exist) sells it on the black market to criminals who definitely do not harbor good intentions towards people?
This is a very dangerous line of thought. The government exists to help and serve the people, not think for them or direct their movements.
@InfinityMan Do you seriously think those things don’t happen already? You’re fooling yourself if you think they don’t have access to this information already. Why do you think they turn hackers into assets? Because they want to be ahead of the game. If we’re spying on our allies and enemies, for sure we are looking at all domestic threats as well. It’s the programs that you don’t know about and the agencies you don’t know about that protect us the most. Just how sometimes kids don’t know what best for themselves, sometimes the people are too ignorant to see the bigger picture and the difficult job of the government.
Edward Snowden is a traitor. Thank God for those government agencies that we don’t know about that continue to do their job in the dark.
^If they have legions of hacker assets to get access to digital info, why are they hassling Apple for access to this phone? Two possible reasons:
- They can’t access it themselves, and want to force someone else to do it for them
- They can, but they don’t want to admit they can. Which should make you suspicious of their motives.
Also, saying that we should allow/legalize things because they happen anyway is… lets go with illogical, in lieu of a more offensive term. We shouldn’t legalize theft because people steal anyway.
Reread what I wrote. Someone accessing the information on your phone, even if it’s not tangible, can indeed have a serious impact on your life.
You’re a student. You may not yet understand how people have a great deal of information that needs to be kept secret to safeguard their financial, medical, and physical safety. If that information can be accessed by the government, odds are that it can also be accessed by folks who are intent on doing harm.
I am constantly amazed at how much our young people are willing to look the other way regarding their personal freedoms and legal protections. This is on the dinner table conversation when my college kid is home this weekend for spring break and for phone conversation with the two older twenty somethings. Wow.
And Amazon just “quietly” disabled encryption option on its Android-powered devices.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/amazon-removes-device-encryption-fire-os-kindle-phones-and-tablets
Eroding freedom is a slippery slope. In Austin we had issue with higher than average drunk drivers over certain times of the year. We allowed to the police to declare certain times of the year “no refusal weekends” where the police can draw blood without a warrant. Austin PD just declared that March 4-21 is a no refusal ‘weekend’ yes an 18 day ‘weekend’ ! Why not make every day a no refusal weekend and let them draw blood for every traffic stop, after all if you’re not under the influence you should have nothing to hide right? Why shouldn’t the police have the right to draw your blood with out a warrant if you run a red light?