While I'm a little conflicted about the whole thing, there isn't much doubt that those two were, indeed, terrorists and I'm inclined to feel like Apple should open the phone for the authorities, but not, at least at this juncture, give them the key.

But what the heck do I know?

But in theory no entity has the right to refuse to comply with a legitimately issued warrant.

Apple could unlock that phone without giving the Feds the key. In this particular instance, I don't think I'd have a problem with that.

Encryption is like a safe; you have to know the code in order to open the door.

But the person that knows the code is dead. Apple doesn't know the code; nobody does. Apple made the safe but the (dead) user set the code. Can a warrant force Apple to crack the safe on behalf of the government?

This would seem to be an important point. Apple is not hiding the data under the theory of their privacy rights or property rights, or of their customers. Apple doesn't know what the data is!

I'm guessing Apple doesn't even want to try because they're afraid they will succeed and that's a bad public admission to make regarding their much-touted security. They were warned early on there would be law enforcement issues involved yet they chose to make a stand, not for the public, but for their marketing department.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

They don't have it. Your phone password is used to make the key.

Can Apple pierce its own encryption and give the government only what it is constitutionally entitled to and no more?

Phone has. They know the encryption is rock solid, it's the same the government uses. They want to be able to turn off the time delay between guesses and prevent the post 10 wrong password tries from wiping the system.

The FBI already has a copy of the phone backup. They are missing the last 6 weeks of location data the phone has. They know the contacts the phone has they can get from those sources. Location data they can get from the phone company.

It's the prescident they want. They have the data.

If Apple is not giving away any secrets about how to break the encryption then what is the problem? I just don't think terrorists should be able to have communications so secure that no one can see what is there if there is a legitimate warrant.

If the government has reason to believe a person was using his computer for illegal activity and convinced a neutral magistrate to issue a warrant I don't see how an internet provider would be within its rights in not providing the requested information.

But having them engineer a hack for their own system is what is being asked. That's quite a bit different than providing log data.

because it does not have the codes, it sells phones that only the owner can unlock.

It is sorta like the maker of a safe being ordered to create a tool to open it, if the owner is dead.

Here are some other points: Note the last one.

...chain-of-evidence issue. The feds can't trust Apple to a) give them all the contents of all the files, and b) that the files are unaltered.

I will just watch. listen, and observe.

Apple has to build a custom version of the operating system to break the encryption. They do that and it gets out somehow, everything is compromised. Also, there were a couple methods that could have been used to get at the specific data without making new encryption breaking tools, but the FBI botched things before going to Apple.

Security is not my area of expertise, but I lean towards supporting Apple on this issue.

If Apple doesn't give the Feds the info they want, I will guarantee that someone will crack Apple's fancy-dancy encryption code. The level 8 operating system with the encryption code is a criminal's and terrorist's dream come true. Apple can protect it by giving the Feds what they want or just wait until some smarty blows the doors off their prized encryption which will make all their phones including my new iphone subject to hacking..

The encryption is strong, hence why the government can't crack it. Good encryption is actually not all that hard. Look at the Cryptolocker variants where people end up having to pay to get their data unencrypted.

What the government is asking is for Apple to design specialized firmware for this individual phone to turn off the incorrect password attempts being limited to 10 tries before wiping the phone and the time delay between guesses. Currently the system requires waiting an increasing amount of time (up to an hour after attempt number 9 before you can enter the password again).

That way the government can hook the phone up to a system to try every possible combination on the phone. If they are lucky, the guy was using a 4 number pin which will take seconds to break as there are only 10,000 potential combinations. On the other hand if he has a 15 alpha/numeric/symbol character code, it will take several million centuries to get the password.

Apple engineer from leaking it for a bunch of dinero? That's a real fear.

But let's say for a moment that it did. What is to stop an Apple employee from leaking that? What would stop a malicious hacker from finding the back door? And even more, what stops some foreign government from demanding Apple give them access for political dissidents or leaders of other countries?

But the way that good encryption works is that it can't be cracked like you're thinking. There isn't some magic password that will break the encryption. The government is asking for a specialized firmware that would let them get around the incorrect password limit and the time delay between entering passwords to brute force the password. If he has a good password the government will be there for a while trying to guess it. My phone has a 15 character password, both because that makes it functionally unable to be brute forced and so I'm not tempted to try to unlock it while driving.

Here's a good article from Ars Technica on the subject:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stake-the-fbi-knows-apple-already-has-the-desired-key/

The encryption on the Apple device allows only a limited number of attempts at entering the correct password before it DELETES the data. The government isn't asking for a secret key or how to crack the encryption algorithm. They can easily do that already, but they have to be able to enter a very large number of password attempts to do so. What the government is demanding is a method to allow unlimited password attempts.

Even so, the court's order is highly questionable. First, the government, not Apple, has the phone. Second, the data to be searched has nothing to do with a probable crime Apple has committed. The Feds can search the phone to their heart's content. Third, there simply is no legitimate legal basis to force Apple to provide technology to the Feds to allow unlimited password entries on any phone, especially since Apple at this time has no such technology. Fourth, if Apple devised such technology, it would undoubtedly be DEMANDED by other governments--particularly China which is one of Apple's biggest sales regions. Fifth, the technology would no doubt fall into the hands of non-government actors. The threat to people's personal data would become even worse than it currently is. Finally, Apple has the right to appeal this court order. They should and they will.

Apple does not currently have the software to do what the government is demanding. Apple cannot gain access to the data from the phone and give it to the government. Nor should they if they could.

They've picked the case of the SB terrorist because it offers them the best shot in the court of public opinion to do what they have wanted to do all along, namely defeat this end to end encryption that apple implemeneted a couple years ago.

There is no way for apple or anyone else to get into that phone without the passcode. And a certain number of wrong guesses at the passcode will delete the data.

So what the feds are ordering apple to do is to build a custom firmware that will allow an unlimited number of passcode tries, so they can crack into it that way. And if you read the headlines, already you have DAs from around the country complaining about the hundreds of iphones they've taken from people arrested for things like low level drug crimes, that they can't get into. All that talk about "coming together on encryption" in the debates? That was about this. Apparently they didn't like the answers Silicon Valley was giving them, so now they're gonna try and force the issue.

That is what this is actually about, namely the drug war. It has nothing to do with "keeping us safe from terror", as usual it's about putting more cannabis users in prison.

The answer, IMO, is that they are afraid they will succeed.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

possible that they could undermine the systems of the phone to allow the FBI to overcome the encryption by brute force.

A couple things are important, here, one is that Apple's argument is on principle as well as real practicality, that the feds are forcing them to weaken a feature of their product which is crucially important to billions of dollars worth of customers who rely on security. Two, the Feds have demonstrated repeatedly that they are disingenuous, to say the least, when they argue that they need these "special tools" for "extraordinary circumstances"- witness the Patriot Act, which we now know was extensively used primarily to arrest American citizens for shit like run of the mill drug use.

I don't for a minute buy the Feds' argument that all of a sudden there is this pressing crisis to get into just this one phone- they've been grousing about apple's encryption for a while, now, witness all the ham-fisted answers to the question given at the debates. And then they instructed the county to change the password on the phone, locking everyone out, either through ineptness or calumnity- so lo and behold, well now we have this public-relations-friendly (who doesn't want to go after terrorists, after all) opportunity to go to court to get what they really want, namely the wish list of the DAs across the country who want to bolster their case against joe blow busted for smoking a joint in his own backyard, who has an iphone they can't get into.

Yes, they have groused about Apple's encryption early on. They warned them there would be conflicts with legitimate law enforcement measures but Apple chose marketing strategy over those concerns.

The FBI is taking a minimalist approach to the issue (as is the judge who issued the warrant): they want Apple to disable the password kill switch and not even tell the FBI how it was done.

There always needs to be a balance. If we are going to make the assumption from now on that the phones of terrorists will always be safe from us, that's taking things too far, IMO.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

Hell, even an authoritarian weenie like Rubio recognizes that if we somehow restrict domestic companies from selling products with strong encryption, other countries still will.

And it's not just a "marketing strategy". There are billions of dollars involved in proprietary trade secrets that corporations want to keep safe from hackers or other unauthorized entities. These same corporations know that the NSA has no problem defining "national security" in such a way to spy on americans to make sure they're not talking about that bowl they just smoked, so why should they trust that "national security" doesn't also entail industrial spying on the behalf of well-connected domestic corporate interests?

If it's a good "marketing strategy" to sell products that are secure when people increasingly put so much of their lives on and through them, is that really so surprising? And are the temper tantrums of cops who can't look at Snoop Dogg's pictures of pot plants because they don't have the password, really more important?


"there has to be a balance"- says who? Why do people assume it's written in stone that the powers that be are ALWAYS gonna be able to read everything? The technological genie isn't going back into the bottle.

As for assuming what they're up to, again, sorry, but they sold the American people the Patriot Act based on 9-11 and then they used it to go after pot smokers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/29/surprise-controversial-patriot-act-power-now-overwhelmingly-used-in-drug-investigations/



Same with the NSA spying. We now know they were feeding unconstitutional spy data on Americans to the DEA and local law enforcement, upon which time a "parallel construction" chain of evidence would be fabricated -otherwise known as lying in court, also a crime last time I checked- so as to cover up the fact that it was actually the NSA who tipped them off.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/

Something like 50% of the people in Federal Prison are in there for drug crimes, the vast majority marijuana. How many of them were convicted, and are still there today, on the basis of these bogus tactics?

So.. you'll forgive me if I am skeptical, at this point.

no reason why Apple refuses to find the information about the dead terrorists and hand it over. Security for the nation vs security for 2 dead terrorists, it's a no brainer to me.

Apple has no obligation to perform R&D for the government. Which is what is required to get the information they want.

But it can't force companies to work for free to help them with their investigations.

And honestly the government is so wildly untrustworthy Apple should refuse out of principle and if forced they should "accidentally" wipe the phone and face the consequences.

This is bullying by the world's largest bully and it should be fought tooth and nail.

Also has a strong economic argument to make. If they can't provide a safe phone a competitor will. Forcing Apple to cripple it's competitive advantage is worth Apple fighting against.

A balance needs to be maintained between privacy rights and public safety. Right now, it sounds like the public safety aspect wins out.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

Judges are often just rubber stamps in cases related to "national security"

Just because some judges are rubber-stampers doesn't mean they all are. Sometimes it really is about public safety.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

first off, it's not about public safety.

Want the public to be more safe? Cap the speed cars can do. Deal seriously with obesity. Etc. You'd save hundreds of thousands of lives in a decade. The government isn't really that worried about your health. Ask Flint residents.

Second, a better system? Try not using the military - for decades - to destabilize entire regions of the world. This terror attack was a much blowback for US foreign policy as anything else.

It seems irrational to me to give up your freedom to privacy, because of the US' disastrous foreign policy decisions, especially as those responsible are still considered heroes by swathes of the population.

So no, not buying that they care about safety. Not buying there's a legit reason for them to do this, or for apple to comply.

arrogant users.

Under the current OS that is.


They can modify the OS for future devices. But they spent many years to get just to this point for that very reason.

From Mother Jones:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/apple-ceo-tim-cook-san-bernardino-iphone

Kevin Bankston, the director of the Open Technology Institute at the left-leaning New America Foundation, agrees. "If a court can legally compel Apple to do that, then it likely could also legally compel any other software provider to do the same," he wrote to Mother Jones. "If this precedent gets set it will spell digital disaster for the trustworthiness of everyone’s computers and mobile phones."

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Then there is the concern that the court order could create a dangerous precedent. "The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge," Cook wrote in his letter. Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, concurred in a tweet posted on Wednesday morning.

From Time:

http://time.com/4229601/real-reason-apple-is-fighting-the-fbi/

This public fight could affect secret orders from the government. Several provisions of the federal laws governing digital intelligence surveillance require companies to provide “technical assistance” to spy agencies. Everything we know suggests that government lawyers are likely to argue for an expansive reading of that obligation—and may already have done so. That fight, however, will unfold in secret, through classified arguments before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The precedent set in the public fight may help determine how ambitious the government can be in seeking secret orders that would require companies to produce hacking or surveillance tools meant to compromise their devices and applications.