Apple CEO Opposes Court Order To Help FBI Unlock iPhone

lcpiper said:
Why are you making things up, Apple is being asked to unlock one phone, not to change anything at all about encryption on any other phone anywhere.

The Court: "Take this phone, unlock it, give us the data."

Apple: "No"

The Court:" Then take this phone, and make it where we can unlock it"

Apple: "No"

But what the government has not said is "Change iOS for all your phones, change your encryption for all your phones, change how you manage encryption for all your phones."
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This is true as far as this specific case goes.

This may be the last phone a judge can order to be hacked as apparently the 5s and later iphones are much more secure (not sure about various Android phones).

The real battle is where the FBI wants current and future phones to have back doors.
 
lcpiper said:
Why are you making things up, Apple is being asked to unlock one phone, not to change anything at all about encryption on any other phone anywhere.

The Court: "Take this phone, unlock it, give us the data."

Apple: "No"

The Court:" Then take this phone, and make it where we can unlock it"

Apple: "No"

But what the government has not said is "Change iOS for all your phones, change your encryption for all your phones, change how you manage encryption for all your phones."
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If Apple does this for the US government, does Apple have to make it available to other country governments? China, Russia, North Korea, etc.?

The NSA records all cell phone transmissions, so the FBI should get all texts and calls from the carrier/NSA. There is no need to decrypt the phone.
 
DocSavage said:
What's funny about this is that even if they do come up with a hack for this iphone 5c, it doesn't actually have to work on a newer phone.
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But a lot of the principles still apply. With or without the enclave you can only enter guesses ever 80ms (so about 5.5 years to guess a six-character passcode) The order specifically wanted that limit removed.
 
panhead said:
If Apple does this for the US government, does Apple have to make it available to other country governments? China, Russia, North Korea, etc.?

The NSA records all cell phone transmissions, so the FBI should get all texts and calls from the carrier/NSA. There is no need to decrypt the phone.
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No the NSA does not record all cell phone transmissions.

The NSA used to get all the meta-data on all calls made between the US and other countries. They may still record all overseas land line calls, they did for about 50 years or more. And even if the NSA did have that recording, if it's purely a domestic law enforcement issue the NSA may not be able to give it to them and in fact, they may not be able to look at it themselves because in most cases, as soon as they are aware that people on both ends of the conversation are Americans, they can't do analysis or database the data, they can only file 13 it and delete it at the next regularly scheduled dump time.

Since just after WW2 we have had this issue and those are basically the rules, we got briefed on it every year in training. The NSA is not law enforcement, they collect foreign intelligence, some foreigners are in the US. If while collecting on foreigners you end up recording people that you come to realize are Americans, you just roll off that frequency and go listen to another. When the tapes go in for work and you get to that part of the tape you just skip it, you are not allowed to do more with it. When you are basically done converting the recordings into written reports, the taps go into a pile and get reused, just copied over. It's not evidence that get's kept cause the NSA isn't law enforcement, it's intelligence collection, all anyone cares about is put in the reports, that recording of Americans talking is soon to be gone. that was how it was done before. Today it's captured digitally and instead of a cassette tape it's on a hard drive, and instead of being re-recorded over they delete the old files to free up storage.

Of course today I don't think they have to do all that searching around through frequencies either, it's easier, find a way to capture all the network traffic from a tower, a switch, whatever. Separate the data by IP and take all the foreign stuff and send it off for more work. Take the local traffic and run it through IPs that are on "watch lists" I would guess, known IPs from authorized targets go off for more work. IPs that are domestic traffic and not attributable to a valid target should be left in storage until it get's deleted to free up room. There is no huge need to hurry up and delete it, just having grabbed it isn't a crime, it's just a necessary part of the process of getting the job done the same as before the cell phone. I doubt many of you realized this, that since the very beginning, just capturing a couple of Americans talking has never been against the law. Now if I create a report from it, file it (data base), translate it, try and find out who the people are or in other words, do analysis on it, that is against the law. But this is how it is, how it's always been.
 
DocSavage said:
This is true as far as this specific case goes.

This may be the last phone a judge can order to be hacked as apparently the 5s and later iphones are much more secure (not sure about various Android phones).

The real battle is where the FBI wants current and future phones to have back doors.
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It's not a battle, not unless the FBI and the USofA is your enemy. I'm not going to ask and you should not volunteer that statement either.

As for the FBI wanting "backdoors", I have said it before I'll say it again. A backdoor allows "unauthorized access". Authorized access is not a backdoor, it's just access. And the Federal government has met with and repeatedly asked the industry to come work with them to figure out the right way to do this. The industry, just like Tim Cook and Apple, need to grow the fuck up and join in and stop playing kid games. If they don't then the Government, being unable to gain the cooperation of industry, will tell them how it's going to be and I for one would much rather have some smart Apple, CISCO, etc engineers and cyber-security guys work with the government to help develop a good solution then have the government force the industry to do it the government's way because that might be a very insecure road.
 
Honestly, this whole argument is ridiculous. Cracking encryption like only helps after the tragedy has happens - we should just ban guns so those tragedies never happen at all. The government's looking out for us - what's the problem?
 
Armisael said:
Honestly, this whole argument is ridiculous. Cracking encryption like only helps after the tragedy has happens - we should just ban guns so those tragedies never happen at all. The government's looking out for us - what's the problem?
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Let's keep this on topic please. Take Gun Control to the Soapbox forum.
 
Armisael said:
Honestly, this whole argument is ridiculous.
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The government has long had every right to go through every turd of a mass murderer. Whatever one feels about privacy, there is no issue of privacy with this specific phone. Let's remember, this debate has absolutely nothing to do with this specific case. It's all about precedent and escalation. And that's really sad for the families involved. Their loved ones died for a political cause and an investigation into their deaths is now only not also a political cause but part of an Apple cause. And maybe Apple is right, but even if they are, I really wouldn't want Tim Cook weighing in on the issue.

I feel like this his how zombies or ghosts come to life.
 
lcpiper said:
It's not a battle, not unless the FBI and the USofA is your enemy. I'm not going to ask and you should not volunteer that statement either.
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You shouldn't have to ask. YES the FBI and the US government IS your and EVERYONE's enemy. ALL government is your enemy and by its very nature evil. It just happens to be a necessary evil.

It is not Apple's job to decrypt this phone. They can ASK Apple to help, but the judge is totally wrong in demanding that they do this. If the FBI wants in this phone the FBI will just have to figure out how to do it themselves.
 
heatlesssun said:
The government has long had every right to go through every turd of a mass murderer. Whatever one feels about privacy, there is no issue of privacy with this specific phone. Let's remember, this debate has absolutely nothing to do with this specific case. It's all about precedent and escalation. And that's really sad for the families involved. Their loved ones died for a political cause and an investigation into their deaths is now only not also a political cause but part of an Apple cause. And maybe Apple is right, but even if they are, I really wouldn't want Tim Cook weighing in on the issue.

I feel like this his how zombies or ghosts come to life.
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I disagree, I think privacy, encryption, precedent, and escalation are all part of the drama smoke screen Tim Cook and others are throwing up around what is a non-issue.

This is one phone that belongs to a dead mass murderer terrorist.

The court asked Apple if they could unlock it, Applied said they could, but didn't think they should.

The court told Apple to unlock it, Apple refused.

The court now is telling Apple to rewrite some of the code so that the FBI can brute force the phone.

In the mean time, the lawmakers in the Government are getting their young wanna-bes in California and New York to propose State Laws that will do things like require all phones to be unlockable or capable of being decrypted. I see a "shot across the bow" for what it is. A warning to Apple and the industry, "keep it up and we are going to make life very very hard for you".

I for one do not want the government to come out and start laying down federal requirements like this that would force manufacturers like Apple to do something that would be bad for all of us.

Apple can unlock this phone, there is no privacy issue, it has nothing at all to do with encryption, and Apple has done it in the past, there is no precedent except the one Apple is trying to create, and hackers have never needed Apple to break into a phone in order to encourage them to give it a try. All of these arguments are a grandstanding play on Tim Cooks part, I don't know if he thinks it's selling phones are what, his motivation is a guess for me. But if he keeps fucking around the Feds are going to force the issue and it'll probably come out bad in the end.

Just like the Ed Snowden thing, which now that the dust has settled, the most notable result is that the Federal Government has announced and created a new security program where Americans are being monitored online at work, and in their personal lives, all the time. This class of Americans have been forced to give up any rights to privacy if they want to keep their jobs, and in fact, the government hasn't said that giving up their jobs would restore their rights. They have not been accused of crimes, they are not extremists or fanatics. These people are those who have National and DoD Security Clearances, Soldiers, Government Employees, Contractors, people like me. And it's all because the sting raised by people over Snowden and how the Federal Government has reacted to it.

Well it is what it is, and now we are here, and whether you get me or not, The Feds are going to do what they think is best from their point of view and the one thing I am sure of, None of us see things from their point of view.
 
lcpiper said:
In the mean time, the lawmakers in the Government are getting their young wanna-bes in California and New York to propose State Laws that will do things like require all phones to be unlockable or capable of being decrypted. I see a "shot across the bow" for what it is. A warning to Apple and the industry, "keep it up and we are going to make life very very hard for you".
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That would go both ways. Apple does what Barrett did. "Tim Cook: Apple will no longer sell Our devices to any State or Locality that had put into effect anti-encryption legislation. We will not honor any warranty of said devices sold in or mainly operated in those localities. We are asking service providers to disable any NEW iPhone account taken into those areas while still allowing 911 calls."

The financial downside to Apple would be small (maybe loose 3 months of sales), and The Public outcry would be defining. NO politician (who wanted re-election) would or could avoid the backlash, especially in places like NY and Cali. So Congress might think that they would have Apple by the balls... But in reality they would be holding each others.

Also, you want to talk about smoke screens... Try the Government trump card "Think of the children". When law or precedent is set taking advantage of a national tragedy the result is ALWAYS bad law and precedent... ALWAYS! The problem here is actually not far off of Armisael point (and I'm sorry, but Kyle was wrong for bashing Armisael on this as it was actually on topic... Using the "for the children" defense.). This case hinges on the same government excuse as most new firearms laws. They have no actual "safety" value to the people (the only JUST cause for a law), only more power for the government. If this is allowed, the only way it would be useful to prevent tragedies is to abuse the power given well past what the FBI/NSA claims to want it for.

This case should really be tried on something like a normal run-of-the-mill drug dealer or similar. If it doesn't work for that then this case is about taking advantage of grieving and duressed populace and should be thrown out

The way I see this going... Apple is charged with contempt. Apple requests trial by jury (allowed by federal law), (if smart )FBI pleads with judge to drop case or it goes to trial (with jury). End result probably 60-75% chance Apple wins and judge ends up with egg on her face. VERY few people now days are ok with expansion of Government power and are well aware of the "Chewbacca defense: Government edition (TotC)".
 
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lcpiper said:
Apple can unlock this phone, there is no privacy issue, it has nothing at all to do with encryption, and Apple has done it in the past, there is no precedent except the one Apple is trying to create, and hackers have never needed Apple to break into a phone in order to encourage them to give it a try. All of these arguments are a grandstanding play on Tim Cooks part, I don't know if he thinks it's selling phones are what, his motivation is a guess for me. But if he keeps fucking around the Feds are going to force the issue and it'll probably come out bad in the end.
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Agreed. Maybe I am not properly understanding all of the technical details, but it's a pretty serious problem if one phone can't be unlocked which the government has every right to the information on it without compromising the privacy of millions of others. If that's the case, the terrorists do win.
 
Armisael said:
In 2013, slightly over 36 thousand people in the US died of chronic liver disease or cirrhosis - the 11th leading cause of death in the country.

Fewer than 3500 US citizens died in terror attacks between 2001 and 2013, including both domestic and overseas attacks.

You're telling me that the terrorists win when we preemptively remove our freedoms in fear of them, and they lose when we refuse to change our policies in response to their honestly minuscule threat?
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What I said was that if retrieving the information from ONE phone, the phone of a mass murder, cannot be done without compromising the privacy of all, then yes, that's a win for terrorists. We're not talking about mass surveillance, warrantless searches or anything like that. But some fear so much what breaking one phone can do in terms of escalating the ability of government to go rouge that they're willing to look the other way when other people die, by making their deaths a minor statistic.

It would seem to me that those who just want to kill and destroy do get cover if there's a lot of people not really worried about it and making terrorist activity a minor inconvenience.
 
As near as I can tell, your position logically requires banning personal use of high-grade encryption entirely - the underlying situation isn't meaningfully different if their laptop was encrypted with BitLocker, some open-source encryption project, or an implementation that they wrote themselves. Would you disagree? Microsoft allegedly told the FBI that they should look for physical copies of the password when pressured to put a backdoor in BitLocker - should that be illegal?

That wouldn't even be sufficient, realistically - they wouldn't be able to check your computer for encryption without a warrant (it'd be a pretty clearly unreasonable search without one), but by the time they have the warrant it's too late. How far do you go to ensure that the government can get into any information we store outside of our heads?
 
Armisael said:
As near as I can tell, your position logically requires banning personal use of high-grade encryption entirely - the underlying situation isn't meaningfully different if their laptop was encrypted with BitLocker, some open-source encryption project, or an implementation that they wrote themselves. Would you disagree?

That wouldn't even be sufficient, realistically - they wouldn't be able to check your computer for encryption without a warrant (it'd be a pretty clearly unreasonable search without one), but by the time they have the warrant it's too late. How far do you go to ensure that the government can get into any information we store outside of our heads?
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I'm not proposing this at all. I'm simply realizing that like any tool, it can be abused. That doesn't mean that government or anyone else should take it away. But it does present a problem. As much as we like to bash government over the head for overreach, there are plenty of times when it has a legitimate right to access personal information. I've not seen anyone say that government doesn't have a proper legal right to access what is on THIS phone. The argument is that government can't access what is on this phone because it would lead to the creation of a tool that would allow government to invade the privacy rights of others in cases that aren't nearly as definitive as this one. And that's a fair argument. But it's also fair to say that in clear cut cases like this, bad guys win if the they have to be protected to protect everyone else.

No one is going to win anything in this situation on either side. It's about as Kobayashi Maru as it gets.
 
Three assumptions:
  1. Civilians have access to encryption the government can't crack ("high-grade encryption" for the purposes of this post)
  2. Terrorists have access to the same things that the general public does before their actions (either because we don't know who they are, because we don't want to punish people for things they haven't done yet, or some combination)
  3. The terrorists win if the government can't extract data from the devices of terrorists once they have a warrant (a slightly paraphrased version of your statement)
If you grant all three of those premises, it's pretty clear that the terrorists can encrypt their devices such that the government can't crack them, and therefore the terrorists win. If you don't think the terrorists should win, then you must disagree with one of those premises and believe one or more of the following should be true:
  1. Civilians don't have access to high-grade encryption (this is the total ban that I mentioned)
  2. Future terrorists don't have access to the same things that the general public does, even before they act
  3. The terrorists don't win when the government doesn't have the ability to unlock arbitrary devices, even if they have full legal rights to the data
It's pretty simple for me - I disagree with the third premise. Which do you disagree with - or do you think the terrorists should win?

Antonin Scalia writing the majority opinion for Arizona v. Hicks said:
Justice Powell's dissent reasonably asks what it is we would have had Officer Nelson do in these circumstances. Post, at 332. The answer depends, of course, upon whether he had probable cause to conduct a search, a question that was not preserved in this case. If he had, then he should have done precisely what he did. If not, then he should have followed up his suspicions, if possible, by means other than a search - just as he would have had to do if, while walking along the street, he had noticed the same suspicious stereo equipment sitting inside a house a few feet away from him, beneath an open window. It may well be that, in such circumstances, no effective means short of a search exist. But there is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
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Sometimes the bad guys win the battles. That doesn't mean that we lose.
 
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Arizona v. Hicks is a probable cause case. That has NOTHING to do with San Bernardino as there's not one question around probable cause. In the case of terrorism, it is a loss if we have to protect their privacy to protect the privacy of all. Why in the hell would I want to protect the privacy of those bent on death and destruction? The only logical reason to help someone that would have no problem mowing me down is that there is a greater threat than that. Government overreach is certainly a greater potential problem. Indeed in the history of my family and it's freedom, government has been a blood enemy. I'm simply not ignoring the fact that there are people who are dedicated to causing as much death and destruction as possible buy any means necessary.
 
lcpiper said:
It's not a battle, not unless the FBI and the USofA is your enemy. I'm not going to ask and you should not volunteer that statement either.

As for the FBI wanting "backdoors", I have said it before I'll say it again. A backdoor allows "unauthorized access". Authorized access is not a backdoor, it's just access. And the Federal government has met with and repeatedly asked the industry to come work with them to figure out the right way to do this. The industry, just like Tim Cook and Apple, need to grow the fuck up and join in and stop playing kid games. If they don't then the Government, being unable to gain the cooperation of industry, will tell them how it's going to be and I for one would much rather have some smart Apple, CISCO, etc engineers and cyber-security guys work with the government to help develop a good solution then have the government force the industry to do it the government's way because that might be a very insecure road.
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You are ignoring the numerous cases where these "backdoors" have been used for nefarious purposes both by governments and nefarious non-governmental entities. And are we supposed to trust that the USG will keep these backdoor keys secure when they are shown on numerous occasions that they can't even keep their own classified information secure? Do you enjoy the fact that all of your security clearance information is freely available on the darker parts of the internet because the USG can't be bothered to lock even that information down? There is a reason they say: "Back doors are open doors".
 
lcpiper said:
No the NSA does not record all cell phone transmissions.

The NSA used to get all the meta-data on all calls made between the US and other countries. They may still record all overseas land line calls, they did for about 50 years or more. And even if the NSA did have that recording, if it's purely a domestic law enforcement issue the NSA may not be able to give it to them and in fact, they may not be able to look at it themselves because in most cases, as soon as they are aware that people on both ends of the conversation are Americans, they can't do analysis or database the data, they can only file 13 it and delete it at the next regularly scheduled dump time.

Since just after WW2 we have had this issue and those are basically the rules, we got briefed on it every year in training. The NSA is not law enforcement, they collect foreign intelligence, some foreigners are in the US. If while collecting on foreigners you end up recording people that you come to realize are Americans, you just roll off that frequency and go listen to another. When the tapes go in for work and you get to that part of the tape you just skip it, you are not allowed to do more with it. When you are basically done converting the recordings into written reports, the taps go into a pile and get reused, just copied over. It's not evidence that get's kept cause the NSA isn't law enforcement, it's intelligence collection, all anyone cares about is put in the reports, that recording of Americans talking is soon to be gone. that was how it was done before. Today it's captured digitally and instead of a cassette tape it's on a hard drive, and instead of being re-recorded over they delete the old files to free up storage.

Of course today I don't think they have to do all that searching around through frequencies either, it's easier, find a way to capture all the network traffic from a tower, a switch, whatever. Separate the data by IP and take all the foreign stuff and send it off for more work. Take the local traffic and run it through IPs that are on "watch lists" I would guess, known IPs from authorized targets go off for more work. IPs that are domestic traffic and not attributable to a valid target should be left in storage until it get's deleted to free up room. There is no huge need to hurry up and delete it, just having grabbed it isn't a crime, it's just a necessary part of the process of getting the job done the same as before the cell phone. I doubt many of you realized this, that since the very beginning, just capturing a couple of Americans talking has never been against the law. Now if I create a report from it, file it (data base), translate it, try and find out who the people are or in other words, do analysis on it, that is against the law. But this is how it is, how it's always been.
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Edward Snowden tweeted last week that “crucial details [of the case] are being obscured by officials.” Specifically, he made the following trenchant points:

1) The FBI already has all the suspect's communications records -- who they talked to and how -- as these are stored by service providers, not on the phone itself.
2) The FBI has received comprehensive backups of all the suspect's data until just six weeks before the crime.
3) Copies of the suspect's contacts with co-workers -- the FBI's claimed interest -- are available in duplicate from those co-worker's phones.
4) The phone in controversy is a government-issued work phone, subject to consent-to-monitoring, not a secret terrorist communications device. The "operational" phones believed to be hiding incrimination information, recovered by the FBI during a search, were physically destroyed, not "shielded by Apple".
5) Alternative means for gaining access to this device -- and others -- exist that do not require the manufacture's assistance.
 
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