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Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

nytimes.com

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Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#271

Post by arca_vorago »

jMyles wrote: post #99
arca_vorago wrote: post #79

Here is my take on the recent apple vs justice saga: Being the cynical fuck I am, a former action arm of the darkside, I have been telling friends and family for years that they should assume anything with a cellular modem in it is potentially comprimised by a nation state or above actor (yes, "above" nation state exists... Its called the deep state you fool). I automatically assume that such publicity is actually cl…

> Its called the deep state you fool You... that's where you lost me.

Sorry for the verbal carelessness, was a bit on the inebriated side last night. Here is a great author to get you started on the deep state.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Deep-State-Democracy-Library/...

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#272

Post by arca_vorago »

tobylane wrote: post #216
arca_vorago wrote: post #79

Here is my take on the recent apple vs justice saga: Being the cynical fuck I am, a former action arm of the darkside, I have been telling friends and family for years that they should assume anything with a cellular modem in it is potentially comprimised by a nation state or above actor (yes, "above" nation state exists... Its called the deep state you fool). I automatically assume that such publicity is actually cl…

>a former action arm of the darkside That one is new to me. What does it mean?

Combat vet in OIF/OEF.

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#273

Post by notlisted »

rsingel wrote: post #120
mikekchar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer (and not even an American), but from my perspective, I don't see how they can loose. They have a warrant. I used to work on telephone switches and we added code that would allow someone with a warrant to record conversations all the time. We even had a generic facility for it. The main difference, of course, is that adding an ability to allow someone to intrude on privacy for a service is different…

It is not settled law in the U.S. whether being forced to handover a password is "contempt of court" or actually self-incrimination protected by the Fifth Amendment. Wiretaps ordered into the U.S. phone and internet networks via CALEA and FCC rulings, which basically meant that all network and phone switches internationally would have the back door. (See what happened to Greek politicians thanks to that). But the pho…

What seems to be settled though is that people can be ordered to unlock their phones with a fingerprint… despite possible self-incrimination: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/virginia-fingerprint-key-di...

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#274

Post by Laaw »

davidw wrote: post #98
Laaw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own a home? Do you own a car? The executive branch can obtain warrants from the judicial branch to "exploit vulnerabilities" and gain access to these "devices".

This is exactly the argument that the 'man on the street' is going to think of. There are reasonable checks and balances in most cases for searching things like houses or wire tapping phones, so people need some good arguments as to why it shouldn't apply to a phone's data as well. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11160748

There are the exact same checks and balances taking place right now for the iPhone.

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#275

Post by mirimir »

csallen wrote: post #266
mirimir wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, TLS with "trusted" CAs is useless, for extreme threat models.

Care to elaborate?

You're vulnerable to MitM if adversaries have issued fraudulent certificates for sites that you use. And we know that this has happened, more than once.

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#276

Post by headgasket »

In the article: "In a report covering the first six months of 2015, Apple said it had received nearly 11,000 requests from government agencies worldwide for information on roughly 60,000 devices, and it provided some data in roughly 7,100 instances."

So an icloud backup negates the need to force apple to unlock?

Any way to backup an ios device online on a 3rd party, encrypted using a public key?

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#277

Post by BinaryIdiot »

headgasket wrote: post #276

In the article: "In a report covering the first six months of 2015, Apple said it had received nearly 11,000 requests from government agencies worldwide for information on roughly 60,000 devices, and it provided some data in roughly 7,100 instances." So an icloud backup negates the need to force apple to unlock? Any way to backup an ios device online on a 3rd party, encrypted using a public key?

> Any way to backup an ios device online on a 3rd party, encrypted using a public key?

Not as seamless as the iCloud backup. Essentially you need to back up each service itself and restore it all manually when you need to.

Not that Android is any better in this regard; it works pretty much the same.

It's unfortunate as there has been a huge focus on device security, mostly for the payment capability but the actual data on the thing? Easily backed up and extracted via government request.

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#278

Post by facetube »

mirimir wrote: post #275
csallen wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

You're vulnerable to MitM if adversaries have issued fraudulent certificates for sites that you use. And we know that this has happened, more than once.

And that'll only get worse if the FBI succeeds in compelling a US technology company to sign something they don't trust.

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#279

Post by [deleted] »

microtonal wrote: post #182
m_mueller wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accesse…

I think that we as a society (though I am not American) should decide first whether we think backdoors for court orders are worth the risk at all. Let's be honest with ourselves, the chance to be killed by terrorists is minuscule compared to other factors that are under human control (air pollution, traffic incidents, homicides). If you are looking at non-terrorist criminal activity, one has to wonder if you don't ha…

[deleted]

Re: Justice Department Wants Apple to Unlock Nine More iPhones

#280

Post by rayiner »

p01926 wrote: post #172
edraferi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> terrorism will never touch the average citizen anywhere near the extent of other tragedies like illness, accidents or natural disasters

This argument ascribes zero weight to the injustice of terrorist attacks. Your logic--that a death is a death--does not admit distinguishing between someone dying in a freak accident, someone being killed by a drunk driver, and someone being murdered in cold blood. It's all the same.

You're ignoring a very fundamental aspect of human psychology: people view a death very differently based on the intent of those doing the killing. Unlike murder, terrorism isn't just an attack on one person. It's an attack on the values, religion, economy, and lifestyle of a whole society. That's why people weigh it so heavily.

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