The FBI wants you to believe that its contentious court battle to force Apple to write new software that would let it hack San Bernardino killer Syed Farook’s iPhone is only about this one, specific, particularly heinous case.
“The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice,” FBI Director James Comey insisted in a letter published on the Lawfare blog on Sunday.
In court papers, the Justice Department has assured the federal magistrate judge who ordered Apple to unlock the phone that after the software serves its purpose — letting the FBI try as many passcodes as it needs to get in without wiping the contents — Apple may “destroy it … refuse to disseminate it outside of Apple and make clear to the world that it does not apply to other devices or users without lawful court orders.”
But the FBI’s defenders and friends in state and local law enforcement are going way off message. They say the ruling is going to have a huge impact on how they do business.
In Suffolk County, Massachusetts, district attorney’s office spokesperson Jake Wark said prosecutors “can’t rule out” bringing their own case of a locked cellphone before a judge, too. “It may be a question of finding the right case,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s going to have significant ramifications on us locally,” Matt Rokus, deputy chief of Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Police Department, told the city’s Leader-Telegram newspaper on Monday.
In South Dakota, Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that “the court’s ruling could have a significant impact on conducting sensitive criminal investigations.”
That sort of reaction is exactly what Apple CEO Tim Cook warned about in his dramatic letter to customers on Friday explaining his refusal to comply with the FBI’s request.
The federal court order goes well beyond ordinary warrants for information that Apple can easily access; it calls on Apple to build a kind of malware it hasn’t built before — that the company considers too dangerous to exist.
Cook wrote that “the implications of the government’s demand are chilling” and could set a legal precedent that would “make it easier to unlock your iPhone … 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’s concern was echoed by the technologists and privacy advocates who jumped to his defense.
In a new letter to customers posted on Monday, Apple drew attention to the enthusiastic response from other law enforcers: “Law enforcement agents around the country have already said they have hundreds of iPhones they want Apple to unlock if the FBI wins this case.”
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. spoke about his smartphone encryption problem multiple times over the weekend in press conferences and television interviews.
When Charlie Rose asked Vance on Sunday if “this is important for you, more than just the case of the San Bernardino phone,” he answered that it was just “one example.”
“There are tens of thousands of other cases around the country, in cases related to homicide, to sex abuse, where data is going to be on smart phones that prosecutors and police officers need to access,” he said.
When Rose pushed him to answer whether or not he wanted “the same thing” the FBI does — a way to bypass the phone’s encryption — he endorsed something very similar. He said he wants Apple to turn the clock back two years to before it unleashed an operating system that let customers protect the data on their phones with unbreakable encryption.
Rod Norgaard, assistant chief deputy in the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, compared the Apple CEO to “Chicken Little” in an interview with Newsweek, saying his county has “well over 100” phones in custody it can’t unlock. He said he thought the issue should be dealt with at the federal level.
“What we are doing is no different than writing a search warrant into somebody’s home, writing a search warrant into somebody’s safe, writing a search warrant into somebody’s computer … in somebody’s car,” Tony Turnbull of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department told a local TV station. “I’ve had numerous homicide investigations where I couldn’t get into the physical phones.”
The police chief in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, told the local paper that the Apple case “is a big deal.”
“The only time you have to worry is when you get involved in illegal activity,” Eau Claire County Sheriff Ron Cramer told the Leader-Telegram. “I understand people’s right to privacy, but when it comes to criminal conduct and future safety, I think the court has every right to make the company comply.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has made it clear he thinks the case has wider implications. “The iPhone precedent in San Bernardino is important for our courts and our ability to protect innocent Americans and enforce the rule of law,” he wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today.
“While the national security implications of this situation are significant, the outcome of this dispute will also have a drastic effect on criminal cases across the country.”
We might start pushing to have the FBI apply “full-bleed watermarking” of their analog and digital “pages” and “letters” with a nice aerial view of Big Brother Mall in Bluffdale, Utah–the “collect everything!” center for the National Surveillance Agency. (As the NSA does not provide security, but DOES provide surveillance, why not call a criminal a criminal, a One-World-Order criminal?)
And perhaps the Latin for “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” at all US ports of entry. Remember Edward Snowden?
Or perhaps a drawing of Matt Taibbi’s “giant blood-sucking vampire squid” with its tentacles wrapped around the Planet Earth, its blood–our blood–dripping out into space–oops, no gravity–OK, then SPRAYING out into space.
Just as a reminder of how venal and pervasive and lethal this government, bi-sexual succubus/incubus has become.
The court order requiring Apple to assist the FBI in by-passing security measures in one of Apple’s phones would set a precedent which would result in any, biological or organizational, individual’s data security measures being nothing but a mirage, seemingly substantial at a distance, but non-existent under close inspection. This order undermines the capacity of a hardware manufacturer to provide a product which can function as a point of access to valuable information which is secured, for obtaining desired goals, without being a foundational weakness which can by-pass any security structure put in place by the purchasing, owning, individual which utilizes it. The successful application of this responsibility, this legal duty, on the manufacturer, results in the ability to request and obtain such an order to a manufacturer, resulting in the open availability to secured data of the equipment’s owner, without the equipment owner being a party to the order, in that the order requires the manufacturer to provide the means to openly access the device, and the device’s owner, not being the subject of the order, could only attempt to obtain limits to such access through requests/filings to a court, none of which would be directly related to what was required under the order, but, rather, incidental to compliance and, therefore, unable to delimit the effective scope and application of the order in any way. This process, as precedent, would result in a governmental investigative unit’s being able to request that an order be issued to a manufacturer of a device to provide the means to access that device because such access allows the investigative unit to determine what the private information/data supports, as regards a potential actionable issue(s), which may result in a positive investigative outcome which could then be used to enable prosecutorial action (fishing expeditions). As such orders are requests to a court with no more basis than an affirmation by a grand jury that such a request be made, weighing the fact that grand juries refuse, on average, 1% of such prosecutorial requests, a process wherein they hear only the prosecutor’s argument in favor, the expected outcome of such a precedent would be that no individual, biological or organizational, would be able to protect their information in any effective manner.
The issue which lay at the center of this question of investigative access to protected personal information, especially with devices that are owned and supplied, or devices not owned but given access, by an organization for the use of private and secured data, is wherein the legal rights and duties of such reside and the responsibility under the law for any limits of accessibility which result from the precautions taken to keep such data secure. If, as the court order to Apple would have, it is the device manufacturer, then the above paragraph is an investigative obtainable outcome. If such rights and duties lie with the organization which owns its private data, then the responsibility for limits of access are decisions made in pursuit of securing that information and any provision of access to an investigative agency becomes a measured balance between the agency’s claim of need as a result of a defined purpose and the organization’s duty as regards that purpose, and the organization’s right to preserve the security of all information outside that duty; a determination which would be made, only after the presentation of argument by both sides, by a court having jurisdiction over the matter, the scope of any access defined, and all such questions regarding the rights and duties of the parties clearly defined before any actions enabling access to that secured information proceeds. This process preserves and protects the right of choice by any individual to the degree of security measures utilized to protect their information/data to prevent unauthorized access, successfully.
There remains the issue of the degree of access and control of information/data which is “prudent” for an organization which supplies the devices used for access to that information/data. The incident in question between the court and its order to Apple offers some facts that are relevant to this. The department which supplied the phone determined the degree to which it would retain access and control of how and for what it was used. The municipality of which that department was a part had supplied the means to retain complete access and control of its use, thereby enabling the review and auditing of that usage. The degree to which this ability was exercised by the department in question was a determination made by the department, but also, under the stated procedures outlined by the municipality, a determination which it had authorization to make. A party, an employee, to whom the department supplied a device, an iPhone, perpetrated a criminal act pursuant to which the device may have been used, which is under investigation. Access to the information/data in order to establish its relevancy to the investigation is inhibited by the decision the owner of the device, the municipality, through its agent, the employing department, as to the degree of security and control it would employ in regard to that device. Here the question of what comprises a “prudent” decision in regard to the degree of security measures utilized for purposes of security and control for a device supplied by an organization for use on that organization’s behalf, becomes a determinant factor. While the incident perpetrated by one of its employees is an act which could not be predicted, sadly, in the Present, its possibility is not a null proposition, but a clear possibility which, unfortunately, has become a real concern for any organization employing individuals, because the lives and decisions of those individuals will, to a measurable degree, lie outside the control of the organization, as they should be, separate and individual. Hence, to the Question: What degree of control and access would a “Prudent Person” retain in regard to the information/data relevant to the usage of a device it has supplied to parties authorized by it for that usage? The answer, given the realities which are intrinsically a part of present day possibility, the existence of a real probability of such an occurrence, for any organization, is: The retaining of control and accessibility to such usage and information, enabling the review and auditing of that usage, is the only unquestionable “prudent” alternative, in that the possibility that the availability of such usage, in the realities of the Present, should become necessary, is, in fact, a predictable possibility. What this means is, that the responsibility for the availability of usage of a device, is within the legal rights and duties of the organization owning and/or utilizing the device for its purposes since the security measures and procedures which will define the limits of such availability are in its decisional scope, and “only its decisional scope”. Just as it would be the responsibility of the organization, should it for some reason, choose to utilize a piece of hardware or a device which was known to be measurably insecure and therefore, potentially, a foundational unauthorized portal to restricted and valuable information, and such a security breach occurred, so it is the responsibility of the organization for the measures and procedures chosen for the utilization of hardware or devices which are designed to provide as unbreachable a security foundation as is possible at the time of manufacture and maintained over the stated supported life of the hardware or device chosen; the manufacturer of such a piece of hardware or device does not possess the authority to define how, when, for what or to what degree the security tools inherent to the device it manufactures will be used, or not used, and cannot be legally responsible for situational outcomes which arise as a result of decisions of security measures and procedures which it did not make; arguing that the manufacturer is responsible for any decision made because the piece hardware or device it manufactured enabled a more inclusive and, hence, more accessible choice, does not and cannot place the manufacturer in the position of being the “probable cause” for a lack of accessibility of information/data that results from the decisions it did not and could not make. Such responsibility is the remit of the party whose information/data is at risk and freely designs and implements the measures, policies and procedures intended protect it and restrict its accessibility; that an instrument is used to obtain this outcome neither reduces this responsibility nor does it transmit it; an organization secures its property by constructing a fence, this does not result in the manufacturers of the fence’s component parts: posts, fencing, razor-wire, etc.; being responsible, a “Probable Cause” of, any future “harm” which is determined to have occurred as a result of the design and intent which decided the implementation of those component parts into the fence, except where those component parts are shown to have failed to deliver the aspects, the utility, which they were represented to reliably provide, based on which the fence was designed and implemented by the builder to the specifications, decisions of the fence’s owner. It should be noted that, in the instance at question, regarding Apple and its iPhone, there has, in no way, by any party, been an allegation that Apple failed to provide a device that did what Apple represented the device would do, to the degree Apple represented as obtainable.
Since everyone likes to talk about “law”, under the Supremacy Clause the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are the “supreme law of the land”.
Each and every FBI official takes a voluntary loyalty oath to follow this supreme law as a condition of employment and authority over regular citizens. There are also federal criminal statutes for those that violate the U.S. Constitution but the DOJ rarely enforces these statutes against it’s own employees.
excerpt:
“The official version of events lacks credibility in most cases of domestic “terrorism,” and the San Bernardino shooting is no exception. “Several eye witnesses described shooters or suspicious persons fleeing the scene as three white men wearing black military type clothing.” Plus, the FBI opened the Farook’s apartment to reporters just two days after the killings – unprecedented speed, showing more concern for publicity than a search for truth.”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/san_bernardino_government_terror
Apple could easily build a phone which even they could not access. As it is they intentionally built a backdoor into the iPhone architecture and the government is simply asking them to exploit that backdoor to respond to a valid court order. IF Apple did actually build a truly secure phone and the government was to make such a phone illegal, I would be the first one marching down Pennsylvania Ave in protest. Shame on Apple for building an insecure product !
We ALL knew this was not a one time request. Now we know for sure it is a precedent setting brute force assault on privacy!
The question is why is so much of the American Public so numb? In 1985 I said 1984 came and went and no one noticed. Are we really that afraid of a terrorist attack? Horrible they are, but any one person is much more likely to be shot by some criminal driving by. I already assume my email is read by whomever and I’m no computer tech. Just a Grandma worried about what kind of world her Grandchildren will have to live in.
““What we are doing is no different than writing a search warrant into somebody’s home, writing a search warrant into somebody’s safe, writing a search warrant into somebody’s computer … in somebody’s car,” Tony Turnbull of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department told a local TV station. “I’ve had numerous homicide investigations where I couldn’t get into the physical phones.””
No. The appropriate analogy here is to science fiction. Let’s say someone invented a way to read the human mind, but teh technique was incredibly difficult to duplicate. US law enforcement would then say that the owner of that technique is obliged to help them read people’s minds.
Once this starts, it never stops, because the FBI’s principle is based on what’s possible, not on what’s right.
Totally agree Capt. Were you reading my mind?
I said in my post of the last article (Apple Leads the Charge on Security, But Who Will Follow?)
… To have a back door to one of the tightest encryption schemes means there will NEVER be true privacy ever again. If you make a note to yourself (just yourself) and text it to your phone, the Govt will always be able to be a peeping Tom into your own mind every time you make the mistake of not using paper.
Government has grown accustomed to beating their masters in the head, using BS like ‘law’ and obedience to fake authority to control the people by nothing more than threats, murder, intimidation and assault.
Government was NEVER allowed to wield power over the people, they were ALLOWED only to SERVE US, not rule us!
The supreme Court is a criminal gang without jurisdiction, no power, but a huge, FILTHY mouth. They need to be done away with. We do not need any government that tries to trample on the people, the proof is visible every day under the three letter agencies whose ONLY job is to DESTROY the freedoms, rights and lives of ALL OF US.
Government uses this ‘law’ to terrorize us into blind, complicit obedience, and will stop at nothing to destroy any of us, singly, or conjoined.
Our government stands AGAINST US at every turn.
Encryption keeps the WOLF OUT, BY DESIGN, as it SHOULD!
Government and the courts have had a free ride on OUR backs, sweat and blood, and for WHAT?
More money to prop up this same government, so it can gun up and use even more of our money and resources against us?
WHEN WILL GOVERNMENT TERROR END?
ANSWER: When WE THE PEOPLE have finally endured ENOUGH abuse by our SERVANTS!
Encryption MUST BE SAFE, ABSOLUTE, and FREE from GOVERNMENT SPYING without just cause.
Taking screen capture of this submission to send to Rubina Filion
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160223/07015733683/list-12-other-cases-where-doj-has-demanded-apple-help-it-hack-into-iphones.shtml
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2718214/Apple-Allwrits-List.pdf
It should be obvious to anybody who cares look into it that US citizens’ rights and protections are under assault. Putting your faith in the legal system is a mistake. These people are unaccountable to the courts or to the American people. As others have noted, this iPhone business is most likely a charade or kabuki theater.
The problem goes beyond the Apple Fan Boys love of their tech toys. Put your faith in Strong Crypto. A strong high quality C++ Crypto Library is needed and easily affordable. It needs to be of Boost Library level of quality or STL level of quality. We are talking about securing the Digital Commons here.
Look at all the money flying around. Jeb pissed away over a $100 dollars in a LOSING political campaign. Less than a quarter of that spent on a Boost Level C++ Crypto Library would improve digital security for the entire world.
And the World is going to need it.
What did I say in my post of the last article (Apple Leads the Charge on Security, But Who Will Follow?) ?
“…Where will it all end? You know how mission creep is with the F.B.I. and “law enforcement” in general: First this is an extremely important “terrorism” case. This is just to keep the country safe. Then it will be; well we need it for a kidnapping case, then a robbery case, then a kiddie porn case, then a prostitution case, then a jaywalking case. And once the precedent is set that the Govt can bully one of the biggest proponents of privacy, the entire facade of privacy in the U.S. is shot forever.”
Somebody give me a mirror. Do I actually exist?
Q: Where will it all end?
A: Privacy will be like Scalia. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160223/07015733683/list-12-other-cases-where-doj-has-demanded-apple-help-it-hack-into-iphones.shtml
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2718214/Apple-Allwrits-List.pdf
In the 1990s encryption developers were required by the US government to register as arms dealers. The government considers encryption to be an armament. Where are all the second amendment supporters? The government is trying to disarm the cyber world by taking away a major defensive weapon in our arsenal–encryption–and not a peep from the NRA. The FBI is disingenuous that they’re not trying to establish a precedent as they’ve filed a lawsuit. The law is all about establishing precedent. If the FBI succeeds, the case will establish a precedent that will allow the government to require all Apple, Android, Microsoft, Blackberry, and Symbian phones to have a backdoor. The backdoor will be exploited by hackers.
What I find ironic is that I can no longer listen to my local police department on a police scanner because they’ve encrypted the channel. The government wants encryption for itself, but not for its citizens.
Easy method to listen to encrypted radio traffic, especially if you work on the radio systems. You use a KVL-3000 keyloader and read all the keys. I have license plate numbers of ‘secret’ DHS vehicles I have installed radios inside. HHCH Astro Spectras, XTL5000, APX7000 and more.
Breaking the ‘code’ is easy, and being on the inside, watching and listening to help people rid themselves of their brutal employee ‘overlords’…It is time to destroy our world of terrorist police agencies using OUR resources against us.
They and the tools they have and use, ARE OUR PROPERTY!
WE OWN EVERYTHING!
GOVERNMENT is OUR creation, and only WE have the RIGHT to destroy it, and build fresh again, and we MUST BEGIN this process NOW, or our fate will come at the point of a government gun aimed at US.
Of course, just take a look at Afghanistan, Syria, Irak to see how well that works out. But if you want the US of A to go down that path … you’re welcome.
I don’t see the difference between unlocking a safe, accessing emails, or unlocking data on a phone – provided it’s requested by a judge.
Maybe I’m missing something here but what about if Apple simply proposes to unlock the phone (which I suspect they already can) themselves and hand over the unlocked phone to the FBI? No backdoor or any software given to the agency. Simple.
It seems that Apple will win the court case, but the FBI will win in the court of public opinion. They will use that public pressure to spur Congress into passing new laws that will compel companies to provide the FBI with a master key for all phones.
It is ironic that the battle for privacy will be led by the NSA. They prefer a balance where security protocols are strong, but not too strong. In other words, strong enough to prevent everyone except themselves from accessing people’s phones. It’s difficult to achieve that proper balance, but that’s their goal.
If security is reduced to a level where the FBI can access phones, then the only person who can’t retrieve the data from an iPhone will be the poor schlub who forgot their passcode.
“…Imagine if Pew called 1000 people and asked, “would you support requiring Apple to make iPhones less secure so the FBI could get information on a crime the FBI has already solved?
”https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/02/22/pew-poll-finding-majority-oppose-apple-premised-on-fbi-spin/
https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/02/22/pew-poll-finding-majority-oppose-apple-premised-on-fbi-spin/
“…Imagine if Pew called 1000 people and asked, “would you support requiring Apple to make iPhones less secure so the FBI could get information on a crime the FBI has already solved?”
Most people can’t see beyond: “Should Apple unlock the phone? Legitimate court approved law enforcement investigation vs. privacy of a dead terrorist”.
Expressing doubts about compelled rewriting of operating systems to remove security features won’t gain much traction.
So Apple will lose in the court of public opinion.
However, the FBI previously asked lawmakers to legislate a backdoor to communications devices, was turned down, and is now asking the courts to order Apple to do it anyway. This will be thrown out of even a US court. At least at the Appellate Court level (Apple tends to do well in the Apple’late Court).
This article doesn’t tell me much.
If Apple provides access this one time, under these specific circumstances, are they legally compelled to grant access in the future?… would this actually “place the tools of surveillance in law enforcement’s hands?”
I get that The Law would love to have full access to our $#it whenever it suits them. But I guess I need a lesson in how warrants are obtained these days to search digital property. Is there a reasonable vetting process, or is it joke? Are they granted in closed sessions without oversight?
Illegitimate use of surveillance by law enforcement is obviously the concern.
But I wonder if having a vigilant cop is so bad, if he’s offset by a vigilant jurist.
My guess is that Cook is aware of abuses perpetrated by “law enforcement” that he cannot disclose to the American public because of Natioal Security Letters and he does not want his beloved Apple to be complicit in their crimes.
Maybe the cops should break out the old shoe leather and elbow grease rather than whining about the lack of an easy iPad solution for the transgression of privacy laws.
As Charlton Heston’s character in an old Orson Wells movie said, police work is only easy in a police state.
My guess is, even though Cook has not said as much, that Cook is sharply aware of past abuses by law enforcement and of national security letter cover ups and does not want his beloved Apple to be complicit in the crimes. But given the naivity of the general population cannot say as much.
So if Apple had moved offshore and stopped being an American company would a judge be able to order them to create something that doesn’t exist?
Am I wrong in supposing that if Apple were not under US jurisdiction this might not be happening?
Tech companies need to get out of the United States since it’s government is hell bent on becoming a police state.
My thoughts entirely.
Ditto Open Whisper Systems…
(a) outside Five Eyes (b) Zero Knowledge.
Like millions of other non-tecchies, I am watching the Apple vs US Government privacy fight carefully for a conclusion before deciding whether to migrate my business to Apple or, instead, to Linux.
I’ve been saying for a while that the world really needs a German Apple, google and other tech companies. It’s dangerous when EVERYTHING goes through one jurisdiction. Balance of powers and all that.
It’s happening. I now use Tresorit for my company’s backup – it’s Swiss-based, zero-knowledge, end-to-end encryption. Proton mail has the same advantages. Although I use Signal and like it, I see there are alternatives such as Threema with the same advantages – Swiss-based.
I will be interested to see whether Apple and others can afford commercially to stay in the US if the US administration’s assault on their customers’ civil rights continues.
It’s very interesting watching the evolution of this over time.
Not a moment too soon!
Glad to hear it Ian.
“It is about the victims and justice,” FBI Director James Comey insisted in a letter published on the Lawfare blog on Sunday.”
And the children, and the puppies, and the grandmas …
Computers may be searched under warrant and today’s phone is a computer first that sometimes functions as a phone.
Hypothetically, what happens when someone has a phone full of evidence of child rape? Say a child reports a babysitter for inappropriate conduct that was recorded on a phone. It’s word against word without the phone data.
Point NOT taken.
How so? I’m not advocating, I’m wondering how you defeat the argument that a computer can be searched while a computer that acts as a phone can’t.
We call them smart-phones but they are mostly computing devices if you quantify function.
Your desktop is a phone via Skype so I don’t see how to get around it.
I’d rather see home computers encrypted but that’s not going to happen.
This claim by law enforcement is pure BS: “The only time you have to worry is when you get involved in illegal activity.”
Why is that so? Consider this interesting book called “Whitey’s Payback and Other True Stories: Gangsterism, Murder, Corruption, and Revenge” by T. J. English, a crime writer, which touches, among other subjects, on the FBI’s relationship with Boston’s most notorious gangster. The author (who has a generally positive view of law enforcement) describes his experiences with ‘problematic’ law enforcement types who should not be trusted with tools of mass surveillance, or really much of anything:
“1) The blowhard self-promoter, a cop or prosecutor who is driven by ego or self-aggrandizement. Public servants in disguise, this breed of lawmen are driven primarily by the desire to advance their profile in the media . . .
2) The lazy bureaucrat. It is true that you may find this breed in almost any sector of government employment, but in law enforcement laziness and slovenly investigative work can lead to wrongful indictments and convictions . .
3) The outright corrupt agent of the law. Movies and TV shows have led the public to believe that for a cop to be corrupt, he or she must be blowing people away, working in consort with gangsters or drug lords, or absconding with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Generally, corruption in law enforcement is far more mundane. It starts with an attitude that the biggest threat to proper police work is “liberals” and that the “liberal media” is out to get the cops. Cops and prosecutors in this camp are unable to separate their personal politics from their job . . .”
https://books.google.com/books?id=mMPD7CP6NXkC
Legitimate police investigations can use individually targeted methods like plea deals, surveillance etc. to gain access to information on encrypted phones, laptops, hard drives, etc. In reality, however, police and FBI have a long record of illegitimate activity, political snooping, harassment of their critics, Hoover-style behavior, etc. Hence, a system of checks and balances must always be in place to protect against such abuses.
Thus, tools of mass surveillance should never, ever be placed in their hands – they’re the tools of totalitarian states (whose secret police all fall into the above 3 categories), not the tools of democratic systems of government.
“The only time you have to worry is when you get involved in illegal activity”
Always a red flag for me and ever the weak excuse.
By the same logic, I shouldn’t mind a police officer stopping by every morning to check on me. Why, I’ll even give him a house key so he can come by when I’m not home. We’re all friends here, right?
It’s also a BS excuse. We have a right to privacy, that’s the issue.
If the Congress backs the FBI and actually enacts a statute that allows this insidious attack on the 4th Amendment, it won’t be long before they follow Russia’s use of DPI. The internet as we knew will be dead.
http://www.wired.com/2012/11/russia-surveillance/
ps… quote”Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has made it clear he thinks the case has wider implications. “The iPhone precedent in San Bernardino is important for our courts and our ability to protect innocent Americans and enforce the rule of law,” he wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today.”unquote
The rule of law. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.. HHOHOHOHOHOHO…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Says the scum sucking totalitarian tyrant who wants the Senate TORTURE report completely locked away so future generations won’t know our government..him included, became a regime of psychopathic war criminals, and still are to this day. What I don’t undestand, is why a rational, rule of law abiding citizenry, hasn’t armed itself to the teeth and surrounded WDC ready to drag these motherfucking criminals, Burr included, out to the street and burn them fucking alive.
Moreover, if this collectivist bastard Burr had it’s way, this country would become no different than Russia in a fortnight. The only thing stopping them is the 2nd Amendment. They know it. You know it. And I know it. This is why the collectivists will stop at nothing to reduce it to ashes. Fortunately, thanks to the Framers vision, we already own close to 400 MILLION GUNS. Now…come and try to take them…asshole.
Is Burr pro-gun control?
Government must die!
Anything else, is just insane.
Here yet again the unwitting public is being treated to the nefarious attempts by over zealous government operatives, hiding behind the dissembling rubric of the enforcement of law and order and hypocritically assuming that only they have an implied right to be the guardians of citizen privacy, trying to subvert the Constitutional privacy mandate of every lawful citizen. This disaffection for privacy seems absent when political malfeasance and corruption are officially cloaked in the nefarious veils of national security and public safety when used to prevent public knowledge of abuses of power.
For those herein who may be interested in actually pushing back against this attempt to further erode communications privacy, I commend this article to your attention:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/apple-americans-and-security-vs-fbi
and, yet again, encourage you to subscribe to the EFF newsletter.
“Work is love made visible.” KG
As Usual,
EA
NEWS
FBI rebuts criticism that it reset terrorist’s iCloud password after attack
By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld | Feb 22, 2016 1:09 PM PT
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3036183/apple-ios/fbi-rebuts-criticism-that-it-reset-terrorists-icloud-password-after-attack.html
They have no right.
The FBI director says: “The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. ”
He wouldn’t have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell us now, would he?
Keep up the good work, Jenna. Folks NEED to know what a potentially huge thing this is.
Somebody may have mentioned this – along the lines of evidentiary discovery rules – but I don’t know if they’ve gone into it specifically. How can the defense cross-examine the “malwarez” Apple creates if it’s destroyed? Certainly this is impossible. Suppose the malwarez is not destroyed so it can be cross-examined. The entire source-code and/or design (if it includes h/w) of the malware would have to be examined as well as the chain of custody, just for starters. Wouldn’t defense experts need to be able to reproduce the exact same results as Apple? If criminals want to abandon phones entirely because even secure ones aren’t secure, choosing instead to chat and conspire in person, will law enforcement then demand audio surveillance to blanket the surface of planet earth? Aren’t we already here?
The gov’t has a trillion $ intelligence budget, FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS, centcom and private contractors and yet they argue that a backdoor to this phone is urgent. In a criminal case they may have a legit argument but the perps are dead– there is no case and insufficient evidence to suggest the info contained would prevent another attack.. It does however represent the perfect case for Comey and others to argue bc we have 14 victims and a great deal of public sympathy. Snowden has already proven what they can do with an unencrypted device so we should be resistant to additional avenues of surveillance.
Well if the police can’t make a viable case for murder or rape or whatever without the data on someone’s cell phone, then they don’t sound like they have much in the way of hard evidence of those crimes in the first instance.
And how is “justice” being pursued in the San Bernardino case when both the shooters are already dead? It’s easy enough for law enforcement to obtain the metadata from phone or internet, with or without a warrant at this point in American history, so how exactly is cracking the content of the San Bernardino shooter’s I-phones relevant or important to legitimate law enforcement objectives?
Makes no sense.
You wont know the content’s relevant or important unless you access it to find out. Maybe it sheds light on planning, execution, additional accomplices. But then again, maybe there’s nothing.
That’s right — maybe there’s nothing. It is simply NOT worth risking the privacy of 100s of 1000s of iPhone users to find out ‘if there’s nothing.’
Are you aware that the phone in question was his business phone, and that he had destroyed his personal phone? No matter what, though, I’m totally against the FBI’s request for the reasons that Jenna’s post makes clear, but what I just posted about the phone is one more piece of evidence that the FBI is lying to everyone about their desperate need to crack this one single phone, and also more evidence that people such as Clinton, Sanders and others in positions of power who have remarked on the case are almost certainly grossly ignorant about what it is that the FBI is demanding.
Exactly. What case is the FBI trying to build? Who have they charged? Does the warrant actually give anything specific, I wonder?
Or does it just say “information on planning, execution, additional accomplices….”?
@Nate-invading the privacy of the people and/or their property on “maybe” doesnt or I should say shouldn’t happen. The dead terrorists, I like to consider them pigs poop, don’t have the ability to show what it is exactly the authorities can get a warrant for. To me its a bullshit lie to get apple to create, identify or whatever, something they want and that is a way in.
What they are seeking from Apple is a way to bypass two essential security mechanisms that will cause the phone to lock: the number of times a bad password can be entered; the amount of time required between password attempts. If Apple can make those issues go away, it is the fantasy of every thief/terrorist who has the means to launch brute-force attacks.
Forget this going way beyond this one case. This goes way beyond Apple devices. This is a fundamental premise of today’s security.
If I were the FBI, Secret Service or any law enforcement agency, this is the last thing I’d want to happen. Law enforcement: be careful what you wish for.