Apple is building a special portal for law enforcement officials to get user data — here's Apple's l

MrGuvernment

MrGuvernment

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Apple is building a special portal for law enforcement officials to get user data — here's Apple's letter describing the plan

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-make-it-easier-cops-get-data-from-users-full-letter-2018-9

In a letter to the US Senate, Apple's highest-ranking lawyer said that the company plans to take several steps to make it easier for police to obtain some of its users' data during investigations.

Police frequently subpoena user data from the big tech companies, including Google, Facebook, and Apple. These companies are required by law to comply with those requests.

Apple, for example, responded to some 14,000 of these requests in the United States last year. To streamline this process, Apple plans to open a special online portal for law enforcement officers to request and obtain user data — assuming they have the proper legal grounds for doing so.

"Later this year, we will launch an online portal for law enforcement agencies around the world to submit lawful requests for data, track outstanding requests, and obtain responsive data from Apple," according to the September 4 letter Apple sent, which was obtained by Business Insider. The letter is signed by Kate Adams, Apple's general counsel.

"When the portal goes live, law enforcement agents will be able to apply for authentication credentials, giving them the option to submit legal requests online," the letter continues.

Apple also plans to create a team that will train police and other law enforcement around the world about what help the company can provide with criminal investigations, as well as an online version of its current training.

Many of Apple's changes are in response to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called "Low Hanging Fruit." The report was presented in a Senate briefing by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, to whom the Apple letter was addressed.

"As more data ends up online and on our devices, we have to come up with new, smart ways for tech companies and law enforcement to unlock information that can solve crimes," Whitehouse said in a statement. "I'm glad to see Apple launch this platform aimed at sharing that critical information safely and securely. I'm going to continue to work on bipartisan legislation to help law enforcement do its work in cyberspace."

"Increasingly, information that is critical is digital, and it's in the hands of third-parties tech providers that control and manage so much information about their users and customers, and law enforcement with adequate privacy protections should be able to access that data," said Jennifer Daskal, a co-author of the CSIS report and assistant professor at American University's Washington College of Law.

Of note, the report did not address matters of encryption — a topic on which Apple famously took a strong stance in 2016, when the government ordered the company to hack the iPhone of one of the suspects in a shooting in San Bernardino.
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What's wrong with that? It just streamlines what is already in place, i.e. Apple complying with valid warrants and subpoenas as requested.
 
The Portal is only for this
"When the portal goes live, law enforcement agents will be able to apply for authentication credentials, giving them the option to submit legal requests online,"

it's not a portal into you device.
 
Correct. It's basically just a system in place to handle the large amount of requests that they get. Giving an official channel and a method for processing just allows for their overhead to go down.
 
I'm guessing iCloud synced data is stuff Apple can provide, but that the phones themselves are still quite secure encrypted bricks, so unless you sync stuff up into the cloud (and are committing crimes that would garner the attention of law enforcement) your data is still likely quite secure. Now that the lightning port shuts off after some period of time, even some of the products out there to brute-force authentication will become ineffective (presumably?).
 
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