Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders was willing to pick a side Thursday in the heated battle between the FBI and Apple over the government’s demand that the company create new, less secure software to comply with a warrant.
The tech giant made headlines on Wednesday with its forceful response to a federal judge’s court order that it help the government break into an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers, Syed Farook.
When Democratic town hall host José Díaz-Balart asked Sanders, “Whose side are you on?” Sanders replied: “Both.”
“I am very fearful in America about Big Brother. And that means not only the federal government getting into your emails or knowing what books you’re taking out of the library, or private corporations knowing everything there is to know about you in terms of your health records, your banking records, your consumer practices,” Sanders said.
“On the other hand, what I also worry about is the possibility of another terrorist attack against our country. And frankly, I think there is a middle ground that can be reached.”
Clinton called the situation a “difficult dilemma.” She discussed some of the main concerns Apple has “about opening the door, creating what they call a backdoor into encryption.” And she pointed out that the capability could be abused by authoritarian regimes like “the Chinese, Russian, Iranian governments” who want the same kind of access.
But she concluded with a favorite law enforcement talking point: that the smart people in America can surely solve this problem and find a way to help the FBI access encrypted communications with a little brainstorming and teamwork. “As smart as we are, there’s got to be some way on a very specific basis we could try to help get information around crimes and terrorism,” she said. Technologists refer to this as the “magic pony” solution.
Try as the two candidates might, however, there really isn’t a middle ground to occupy — either in the war between Apple and the FBI, or when it comes to the use of unbreakable encryption generally.
Technologists almost unanimously agree that there’s no secure way to insert a backdoor into their products without undermining security and exposing data to criminals and hackers.
And Apple CEO Tim Cook, supported by a growing legion of cryptologists, scientists, and other tech companies, said Wednesday that acceding to the government “would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
If Apple is forced to build a new way to hack its own product, the genie would be out of the bottle — the U.S. government could ask for it to do so again, and other governments could demand the same. Apple users would no longer have confidence that their data is secure, and presumably, other companies would soon find themselves in the same position.
Bernie is poised to change things about as much as Barack was.
This sucks. Politicians either just don’t understand math or don’t care about people’s right to privacy anymore. If Bernie Sanders–the guy clearly using the word socialism incorrectly, supporting our drones, and supporting the brutal occupation of Palestine, but still considered the beacon of the far left–is making an argument to moderation fallacy on the issue then there really seems to be little hope. We need to organize for ourselves against mass surveillance and start to rely on our own open-source tools for communication.
Bernie does NOT support the occupation of Palestine and specifically warned against the military/industrial complex in his answer, but also said he didn’t know enough about the subject to make a decision yet. IMHO, when he does learn what cracking the phone entails, I’m fairly sure he will side with US, which is to say let the FBI use the overbearing tools it all ready possesses to get their answers. This is why we are voting for him, because he sides with us.
Any backdoor could be exploited by criminals — SUCH AS THE US GOVERNMENT. What we need is a backdoor that can only be accessed by responsible, ethical people. That shouldn’t be hard for the techies to invent.
Because of how math works, criminals cannot exploit backdoors. With existing technologies (and possibly all technology until 500 years into the future), no criminals will be able to break iPhone encryption before the heat death of the universe. The main problem here is that if we give a backdoor to a now-safe organization that undermines security for 30% of the global population, what will happen if they become corrupt? Also, do some research on ciphers.
Fear of a confused electorates response to Constitutional protection issues.
Sheesh.
Fear hits a grand slam again.
There is more talk on this phone deal,than they reported on the incident itself,and the aftermath.Funny dat.
“FBI is playing politics, very cynically and very adroitly.”
This article digs deep into what and how and why it is that the FBI is, as usual, lying to the public, and to the lazy and wantonly ignorant representatives of the public, to simply gain more power and funding. It is a “Must Read” article.
Of course, if they just had the NSA break in for them, it would be more of an official acknowledgement that the Government capabilities in that regard. A can of worms Big Brother would rather not have to mention outside of a FISA court.
“If you can securely delete all of the emails from your server prior to handing over to the FBI, it makes all of the difference in the world.”
Hillary Clinton – Former Secretary of State of the United States of America
Both Hillary and Bernie want privy to all of your personal info if elected. Why would they tell you this pre-election?
Neither is stupid, but both are flesh eaters. Your flesh is on the menu.
“If you’re not at the table, then you’re on the menu”, …..as one wag recently posted on some comment board.
Government is asking Apple to pay Apple Programmers to undermine the security of their product at Apple’ expense to be good Americans or Citizens of the Homeland ? Post 9/11 American Corporations bent over for the blatant abuse and intrusion of Customer information meeting Federal Officials demands. Knowing that Apple is refusing to hack Apple tech is refreshing and the Company deserves praise.
I can’t help but thinking that it would also be important to consider, that Apple could simply give FBI et. al a do-it-yourself kit, for breaking any of the security features that an iPhone might have.
I am no Apple customer, but for Apple to state that they won’t build software for FBI, that wouldn’t be enough, if Apple can quietly give FBI the means to break into iPhone themselves (if they haven’t done so already).
And what about NSA? What is Apple’s relation to NSA?
I’m in an odd position on this one. I have generally opposed surveillance, and I sympathize with the people posting here. But… the problem is, I just can’t get myself excited about Apple’s right not to share its power to hack into its phones whenever it wants, in the limited case of a dangerous terrorist with evidence of foreign support.
Suppose you have a basement bomb shelter. You have a key for that shelter in your bedroom … somewhere. Maybe it’s under a pair of underwear, or hidden in a collectible gin bottle, or got knocked off into the dust pile behind the computer. The police show up with a claim that some guy you knew says he stole the key and snuck into the bomb shelter last year (when the key was in plainer sight, I suppose) and hid a pile of cash he stole from the bank there where he knew it would be safe. They have a warrant, and they want you to open it.
Well, you *could* refuse, but then again, they *could* bash it apart to the point where it no longer blocks fallout, or go rummaging through your bedroom making it as messy in your eyes as it is in theirs. Or you can go find the key and open it so they can have one look see and be gone.
Apple, likewise, *could* refuse, but maybe they go rummaging through its bedrooms until they fully reverse engineer the phone and/or come up with a developer key they can use themselves – altogether a worse option!
My feeling is simply that Apple didn’t make the phone fully secure. If they can get in it, it’s not secure. They should have the *right* to make the phone fully secure, and that’s the line I want to defend at. The line I don’t want to defend at is where Apple can break the phone but they can say nyaah-nyaah to genuine anti-terrorism investigations, and meanwhile, for all I know, they’re selling full access to any phone they want to the NSA or its foreign counterparts and there’s nothing we can do about it.
This should not be our hill to die on. This should not be where the right to encryption gets decided. We support the availability of unbreakable encryption, not the proprietary rights of breakable encryption!
That is the thing. They can’t get in. They are being asked to write a new version of iOS that would not contain the safeguards that currently exist. Apple IS doing everything in their power to assist the FBI, including giving copies of the iCloud backups of the device. Sadly, the last backup was in October, and the FBI wants the information since the last backup.
I don’t care if you call it rewriting the OS or what, either you can get in or you can’t. You’re expressing this weird and common blindness that “changing the OS” is somehow off limits. But for Apple, it’s just a couple of quick changes and a recompile. There’s nothing morally special about it.
Two things are a given:
1. The NSA already has hacked around any iPhone login security features.
2. Apple already has a versions of its OS with the login security features disabled, and can switch controller chips anytime to access this phone. In fact, they probably already gave them to the NSA to accomplish task #1.
However, both sides wish to propagate the fiction that Apple’s products are fully secure (Apple for commercial reasons, the government to justify introducing greater legal authorities).
Hopefully this will win the Best Screenplay of the Year Award.
to help the FBI hack phones and who else?
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.”
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
“President Barack Obama today sent Congress a proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 Department of Defense budget request of $585.3 billion in discretionary budget authority to fund both base budget programs and Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).
http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/605365
The great superpower invades countries, assassinates people, surveils everyone and put others on lists because of what they might do one day.
And now the existence of private conversations is considered threatening to America(ns), you know because of what people might say to each other .
What happened? Seriously.. This is badass America.
Its pathetic, terrifying and very strange.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/132932268/a-physicist-explains-why-parallel-universes-may-exist
From what I’ve been seeing in this hotly debated issue of privacy v. access, are a lot of deceptively worded misinformation bytes intending to get everybody on board to give up our privacy in the name of “terrorism abatement”. There is hardly a day that goes by that the FBI or NYC heads are screaming for unlimited access to our private records. If these egregious requests are allowed by the tech companies there will be no going back. They act like it’s just 1 or 2 items when in reality once the tech tool is created they will have virtually unlimited access to all of our information without needing a warrant. The people in San Bernadino are dead and access to this supposed i phone won’t bring them back, so what’s the real reason for the request? I don’t trust or believe anything the FBI says and giving them unlimited access just makes it easy for them to do even more actions destroying what few civil liberties we all have left. I hope the techs don’t cave but with all the strong arm tactics available to the US govt, I’m not holding my breath.
The SB shooters are again just an example of a security apparatus that leaves US insecure.Purposely?
Even if you agree completely that a warranted search is a completely reasonable thing, and that, in principle, there is no reason companies should not comply with a government mandate to support warranted searches, the technological reality is that creating an avenue to that access destroys data privacy for everyone.
The household or building search warrant, the car search warrant, doesn’t do the same thing. It seems like the entire idea of search warrant needs to be revisited for digital data.
Online you can purchase software for data recovery from the iPhone. Why doesn’t the FBI use this.
Just so everyone’s clear about the details here:
* The court did not order Apple to decrypt the subject phone. Rather it ordered Apple to create software that would bypass/disable/inactivate the feature that “wipes” the phone after nn incorrect attempts to enter the passcode. Specifically:
Further, the order provides that the “technical assistance” software be encoded by Apple using the “subject device” serial number in order to make it applicable only to the phone in question. And, finally, the order provides for the possibility that the work be undertaken at an Apple facility and that, if that is the case, Apple provide the Feds with remote access to the contents of the phone.
* Apple maintains that is is not practicable to do these things without risking the escape of the cracking procedure into the wild.
Just to keep the facts straight. Very few who are reporting on this issue seem to understand the details sufficiently well to do so accurately.
I said: “. . . if that is the case, Apple provide the Feds with remote access to the contents of the phone.”
Actually, the wording of the order only requires that Apple, “in that case,” provide the feds with remote access so that they can attempt brute force cracking of the passcode.
If there were a constituency for civil liberties in the US, it would be worthwhile for the candidates to push back on this. Without getting into technical details, rewriting an operating system in order to recover data from a single iPhone seems a little bit like using a bulldozer to lift a paper cup. The FBI should just call the NSA – hacking into electronics is their supposed area of expertise. If they can’t do it, somebody should question where all the billions of dollars for signals intelligence is going. They’d probably find the Zune team hadn’t got round to looking at iPhones yet.
However, the US has no significant civil liberties constituency. So my advice to the candidates is to back the FBI to the hilt and demand that Apple comply with the court order. It may damage national security (by creating vulnerabilities that others could exploit), but it’s the best election strategy.
I am no technologist but it seems the best technologists have no solution, stumped & stuck. Gosh, I would like a magic solution but no middle ground exist between this Devil and the deep blue sea. Either we lose some information important to terrorist investigations; or ride down the bumpy information highway with the cocked pistol of nothing is coded beyond retrieval pointed dead between the eyes of Nations, corporations, organizations and individuals.
Bearing all information to our “will meaning protectors” and corporation who only wish to serve or “service” us better, peripheral exposes our throats to all tyrants and terrorists, bad actors and enemies, even the will meaning or careless that get it wrong. It seems that Terrorism is not the ultimate evil.
In other news: Hillary barks like a dog (translated barks turn out to be her pledging allegiance to Israel in ‘Bitch’). Sanders runs to bathroom and writes “all your base are belong to us” on wall. Trump dreams of Mexicans building walls at their US border, McCain can see Afghanistan from Iraq, JEB falls in love with acronyms, Cruz won’t make Rubio his VP but doesn’t rule out a possible marriage arrangement.
Ahhh… circus maximus. And it’s free. Apparently, of course.
ALL of this is based upon an assumption.
Sanders, Clinton, Jenna Mc-Laugh-lin, and many more people
willingly accept the “law enforcement talking point” that
Syed Farook and his wife were the perpetrators of
the murders in San Bernardino.
This determination has not been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
So, the manufactured need to AGAIN prove that the
now-former constitution of the fake U$A is a hindrance to
the desires of the privatized security industry is again
presented as if it a justifiable “talking point.”
That neither Sanders or Clinton finds this desire to be
repugnant and an attack against the supposed constitution
which they both has pledged to “uphold and defend” is
indicative of the shallowness of what passes for the
character of the fake U$A.
The corrupt assumption of someone’s guilt is being used as
the basis of increasing the corrupt scheme of tipping the
scales in the direction of an increasingly fascist program
under the pretense of democracy.
One of the dangers of anger.
“…….Which they both has…..” should be
“which they both have.”
My apologies.
In my comments above I’ve stated that I don’t believe anything the FBI says or does, with that in mind we have slightly less chance of being misled with their operations. We are all being duped and really have no power left to do anything about it.
The most important factor that is missing from this equation is that the general public is NOT seeing the entire picture, so there is not an honest debate taking place.
There are no statistics available for government corruption. Many, if not most, searches by government officials is likely to punish citizens for exercising their legal constitutional rights or outright fraud by government officials.
Ex: warrantless spying on the boyfriend dating the cop’s daughter, the guy dating the cop’s ex-wife or to illegally silence legal First Amendment exercises (Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street protesters, etc).
We need real watchdogs to police the police and document this part of the equation: what are the legitimate cases driven by probable cause of an actual crime -versus- fraudulent searches not governed by the 4th Amendment. How can we solve a problem without all of the facts?
Keep in mind, the 4th Amendment outlaws “preemption” policies of any kind including Bush’s Preemption Doctrine.
Aside from both Clinton and Sanders just trying to avoid giving any real answer to the question, I doubt that either one of them really even knows what they’re talking about in this matter or understand how it all works.
I’ve read the following take on the specific issue, and would appreciate input from any and all who are truly versed well enough to competently rebut or add to what Jurgen Geuter has written. The article is long winded, and, frankly, quite boring and useless about the political aspect, but I’m not nearly up to speed on the technology issues addressed to rebut what Geuter has written. Please check it out.
“there really isn’t a middle ground to occupy”
I don’t understand what’s “middle ground” about the idea of complying with a properly obtained warrant. And I also don’t see anything controversial about the idea of challenging whether a warrant was properly obtained. That seems to be entirely compatible with long-standing legal principles. Anyway, these are very fact-dependent situations, so I also don’t see the issue with Clinton and Sanders taking the stance they have.
On the slippery-slope argument, which it seems is Apple are running with in public – I don’t really get it. This is not some fuzzy probable-cause situation, the individual here was undeniably dangerous and violent. It doesn’t seem difficult to take a principled stand and say – if you have committed violent crimes, Apple will co-operate with investigators.
But lastly, this: “Apple users would no longer have confidence that their data is secure”. Okay, this is 2016. Who has any confidence their data is totally secure? Pretty sure I’m not the only person who thinks you can’t remove the risk that data stored on an iPhone will be taken, and you’re foolish for assuming otherwise.
This is the Real Reason Apple is Fighting the FBI By Julian Sanchez:
Continued at link.
So long as they don’t start assassinating Crypto scientists, like they did Iranian scientists.
I have confidence the data is presently secure from the FBI. I have confidence the FBI has better tools to hack phones than most other groups therefore I have confidence the data is presently secure from 99% of the threats out there.
Did the shooter(husband)have a trail of violence?How could he have brought his new wife here if so?
All I know is the story dried up right around the mention of the messianic Zionist coworkers taunts.sheesh.
re: “Magic Pony”
“… The Maestro says it’s Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum,
when you’re waiting for the miracle to come. *****
… If you’re squeezed for information, that’s when you’ve got to play it dumb.
You just say you’re out there waiting for the miracle to come.”
Leonard Cohen, Waiting for the Miracle (1992)
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the NSA gets in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCS_MwkWzes
ILLEGAL(and by that I mean stooge FISA courts) spying is supposed to be outlawed. LEGAL wiretapping occurs when a judge is presented with strong evidence that a crime is being committed or being planned.
A lot of Glenn Greenwald’s strong opposition to spying is that it WAS being done illegally, including by stooge FISA courts.
Like libel and slander laws, one has the right to say anything, and must be prepared to defend it.
Sanders is right…Apple demands strong evidence…and the FBI is notorious for being scumbags.
This for it or against it argument makes George W. Bush sound intelligent by comparison.