The debate over encryption has reached new heights in a legal battle between Apple and the FBI.
In response to a federal magistrate’s order requiring Apple to assist the agency in accessing data from the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, the company is pushing back, pledging to challenge the request in the name of its customers’ privacy.
CEO Tim Cook published a public response early Wednesday morning, just hours after a Riverside, Calif., judge signed an order asking the company to break into the encrypted iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, who, with his wife, shot and killed 14 people at a holiday party in December.
“We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good,” Cook wrote in a letter to his customers. “Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.”
The 40-page court order from the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles requests that Apple’s engineers create a new iPhone operating system designed to bypass the company’s security features and install it on the iPhone 5C that belonged to Farook. Prosecutors hope to access “critical data” about the shooters, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, including people they were in contact with and where they traveled before the shooting.
Despite a warrant, prosecutors argued, “The government has been unable to complete the search because it cannot access the iPhone’s encrypted content. Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily.”
The court order asks Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” in creating a new mobile operating system. This iOS would disable a feature in the iPhone that automatically erases its data after too many failed attempts for access. This way the FBI can attempt to unlock the phone by submitting an endless series of passcodes via something known as a brute-force attack.
While the order applies only to Farook’s device, Cook argued that creating this new software would ultimately compromise the privacy of the “tens of millions of American citizens” who use Apple devices.
“In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession,” he wrote. “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.”
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/apple-vows-to-fight-federal-order-to-share-san-124228263.html
If Apple caves
A lot of people will shit can them in a heartbeat
I’m one of them
I’m guessing that Apple probably caved months ago, and this whole debate is part of the dog-and-pony show.
This entire “debate over encryption” is being staged to pave the road to making encryption illegal.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with terrorism, and I’m sure that Apple will give the government any information they ask for, but they have to keep up the pretense of defending their customers’ privacy.
The news, or the government (same thing), will insist that encryption is stopping them from catching phantom terrorists, and it will have to be made illegal to keep you safe.
Then they’ll use their new spying privileges to find out which Americans are likely to resist communist rule.
I don’t doubt your view on this one bit
The horse has already left the barn by the time this warning got down to us minions
LOL….Cook going out of his way to insist that the tech doesn’t exist….which means it totally does exist already.
Encryption. So I guess everyone over at the NSA are just standing around scratching their heads completely baffled. Stymied.
“Curse you, you infernal iPhone! You win for now. But one day, I shall break your evil encryption!”
“Dude, you need a vacation.”
Like Jolly Roger and others, I suspect that backdoors already exist in these encryption products, and that these public disputes are intended to give people false confidence in the security of these products against government spying. I can’t prove this; but in the wake of the Snowden revelations and other information, caution is highly advised.
If you must communicate privately by electronic means, it’s best to use code words and/or one-time pads that have been exchanged in person and in advance with your buddies. If one-time pads are used, the encryption/decryption should be done only on air-gapped computers. (Wikipedia has more on the one-time pad.)
They can’t un-invent the math behind encryption. So, if you understand the math and can code…write your own. Have peers test and try to crack it.
A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
http://www.moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html
And, if you can read russian here’s the linux based OS their army is using.
http://sputniknews.com/science/20160217/1034887837/russia-army-laptop.html
http://www.astralinux.com/
-flek
“Prosecutors hope to access “critical data” about the shooters, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, including people they were in contact with and where they traveled before the shooting.”
Contrived bullsh#t to enact more bullsh#t.
“In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today…”
Merely the fact that he stated as much is more than reason enough to suspect it does.