Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then the people who care about privacy become targets.
They are already targets.
Everyone cares about privacy. What are you saying exactly?
Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
171–180 of 314 posts
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#172The article describes the Justice Dept. doing exactly what has been so widely predicted on HN and elsewhere. Doesn't seem like good timing on the government's part to publicly announce the intention to seek numerous iPhone "unlockings". Rather it plays into Apple's argument about unleashing a torrent of court-ordered demands which will have adverse consequences for security. Legal minds should weigh in, but I'm think…
It makes total sense that the givernment would use it's forensic capabilities whenever the need arises. The question at hand is: "can the All Writs Act compel a company to proactively defeat its own security measures?" The answer will apply to all cases. The more important question is "Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? And if so, how can that be enabled without comprom…
> Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? And if so, how can that be enabled without compromising the general security of the device?
No. And that's both impossible and a massive compromise.
This case helps us tackle that first question. Here the murderer's personal phone and computer hard drives were destroyed — rendering them "above/beyond the law". Just because some data is digital doesn't place it in some special legal realm more important than shreddable/burnable paper or the air secret conversations were spoken into. There are fundamental limits to recoverability. If technology companies are to be forced to maintain vulnerabilities because governments see all their customers as potential terrorists, the industry is doomed.
The real problem here is although terrorism will never touch the average citizen anywhere near the extent of other tragedies like illness, accidents or natural disasters, the media treat it like it's the single most important issue — making people fear for their lives is good business. I'd die before sacrificing freedom of speech every time, but the news business just seems too like racketeering. We need to fight the fear.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#173> “What we discover is that investigation into one crime often leads into criminal activity in another, sometimes much more serious than what we were originally looking at,” They want access so they can go fishing too? They're really not doing a good job of sticking to the 'necessary and proportionate' line.
That sentence caught my eye, too.
So they are publicly stating that they are not really interested in just solving the case and prosecuting the offender. Instead, they want to see what else they can stick to the man.
I'm sure if you just dig deep enough, you will find some crime in everyone's data. Guilty until proven innocent.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#174America is ruled by corporations. It is unjust but can you imagine Apple, an american company, having fines or being rendered such that it was disadvantaged to sales in China/India or setting off its decline.
The only time the exception was ever made was to prevent monopoly about a hundred or so years ago.
Otherwise its perfectly ok to be an American corporate citizen and challenge the law.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#175The article describes the Justice Dept. doing exactly what has been so widely predicted on HN and elsewhere. Doesn't seem like good timing on the government's part to publicly announce the intention to seek numerous iPhone "unlockings". Rather it plays into Apple's argument about unleashing a torrent of court-ordered demands which will have adverse consequences for security. Legal minds should weigh in, but I'm think…
It makes total sense that the givernment would use it's forensic capabilities whenever the need arises. The question at hand is: "can the All Writs Act compel a company to proactively defeat its own security measures?" The answer will apply to all cases. The more important question is "Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? And if so, how can that be enabled without comprom…
I wonder if there's a way of using software licensing to bypass the issue. Consider this. What if there was a piece of encryption software where the copyright was held in the UK (i.e. not in the US). The key thing about this encryption library: it has a special license. One of its clauses says that it may not be edited, it may only be compiled by clang, may only be distributed in the form that results from a good-faith compilation under clang, and that - as a condition of use - the distributor may not implement workarounds. The US court would have no jurisdiction for ruling on the actions of the copyright owner. And Apple could defend its behaviour by saying that intellectual property law means that it is not within its rights/mandate to modify the included software.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? And if so, how can that be enabled without compromising the general security of the device? IMO yes and here is how I'd implement this given a secure enclave: 1) Have Apple generate a device specific key that unlocks the device without pass code. 2) The key gets encrypted with an Apple held master key and printed on the inside of th…
4) The process for accessing the data on a specific device becomes simple - law enforcement needs to be in possession of (A) the device and (B) a court order. Apple will decrypt the key if forced by court order. I think, we can assume that up till now, Apple has its private keys protected on some disconnected machine in a HSM, perhaps multiple HSMs, that are only accessible with very restricted access. When there is…
I concede, these are good points. I'd like to add though, that it would be better overall to have a solution that at least tries to limit access to specific devices, rather than Apple being forced by the government to build in general backdoors. But I can't really think of a better solution. Maybe have a hierarchy of keys, one per some serial number suffix, each in different servers in different buildings and accessed by different people, so if one gets lost it at least only affects a fraction of devices on the market?
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#177I know this is going to sound crazy, but there are parallels here between Apple vs. the FBI, and Superman vs. Batman. Superman represents an unchecked power, and Batman finds this unchecked power to be unacceptable as a risk, in case the power is ever used against humanity. Is this a subtle marketing ploy from DC Comics‽
Superman vs. Batman, they are making a new movie about that. Superman caused a lot of damage in The Man of Steel movie and many people died as a result of his fight with Zod that ended up with him breaking Zod's neck and killing him. The movie could have gone a different way if he asked his Father's hologram about Zod, and any weaknesses he might have during the 24 hours he had to think over. Then use the craft he ca…
Given the powers these two characters have, Superman would kill Batman while watching a movie with Lois Lein and eating pop-corn - without Lois realising he was gone for a split of a second.
ps. Not big on DC/Marvel comics/movies, they're all the same to me but keep some f*cking consistency plz.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#178The article describes the Justice Dept. doing exactly what has been so widely predicted on HN and elsewhere. Doesn't seem like good timing on the government's part to publicly announce the intention to seek numerous iPhone "unlockings". Rather it plays into Apple's argument about unleashing a torrent of court-ordered demands which will have adverse consequences for security. Legal minds should weigh in, but I'm think…
It makes total sense that the givernment would use it's forensic capabilities whenever the need arises. The question at hand is: "can the All Writs Act compel a company to proactively defeat its own security measures?" The answer will apply to all cases. The more important question is "Should the government be able to access citizen's digital data with a court order? And if so, how can that be enabled without comprom…
> It makes total sense that the givernment would use it's forensic capabilities whenever the need arises.
Assuming you mean "its" then apple's capabilities are not the government's. The government could physically attack the chips holding the data instead.
They're just risk-/effort-averse and would like others do the work for them.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#179Wow so the FBI lied. Imagine that.
Guess law enforcement thinks telling the truth is not something "good guys" are required to do.
Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are already targets.
Everyone cares about privacy. What are you saying exactly?
Perhaps the middle part of the argument is missing?
People who care about privacy == people who use encryption. People who use encryption already have all of their communications flagged and stored, if the rumors are true.