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Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

blogs.reuters.com

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Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#121

Post by ikeboy »

jtgeibel wrote: post #95
ikeboy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In an interesting work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government, not unreasonably, called the printout “illegible.” >“To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted…

This never made much sense to me. Even the capital letter W at 12 point repeated 2,560 times fills up 1 page plus another 10 lines. Maybe 2,560 bytes printed out as ones and zeros? That still seems like it would only work out to 11 pages at 12 point.

I'm not sure, but maybe there were multiple keys, each of which took 2560 characters? The quote does say "keys".

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#122

Post by rtpg »

clamprecht wrote: post #57
msbarnett wrote: post #3

Not especially shocking. The Gov'ts proposed theory of the All Writs Act as the legal equivalent of "sudo do whatever I want" was pretty damn tenuous.

It seems easy to rule out the "do whatever I want interpretation". If this were true, the Constitution becomes unnecessary. This is a contradiction. QED

This is super dismissive of the actual legal arguments, and basically preaching to the choir.

The gov'ts interpretation is that "If the court issues a search warrant, we can coerce third parties into cooperation." A specific usage of the AWA, which basically says "The courts can coerce people to do things to enforce rulings".

This leads to relatively non-controversial things like asking apartment landlords to open doors to the house.

The controversy here from a legal standpoint is that what's being asked of Apple is too burdensome. I don't really know the constitutional argument against burden (probably the 10th, limiting the power of federal government), but there seems to be some.

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#123

Post by brandeis »

I think the technicality in the current case will hinge on the definition of "necessary" and "appropriate" if this Judge's opinion of that drug case is correct. Both from the AWA and then CALEA Id. § 1002(b)(2). "...and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." To my understanding the way in which the government wants Apple to hinder the security on the iphone is not by breaking the decryption, but by eliminating the limit on entering the code, so that they can then brute force it. This in my opinion falls outside of the strictest sense interpretation of the second statute's definition of necessary. Therefore it also falls outside of the "appropriate" in the AWA. I feel that an issue this large falling under a distinction so small is a bit scary.

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#124

Post by ikeboy »

kelnos wrote: post #104
thesimon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>meaning an order to produce information. But couldn't they write a modified iOS software themselves (obviously not easy as cake, but for the sake of the argument) and use a NSL to get Apple's key to sign the update? It seems like having the update signed is the issue, not writing the update. Edit: When looking at the scope of the NSL, it seems like only metadata can be requested, not arbitrary stuff. IANAL, but it s…

This modification would require having iOS source to modify, which certainly the FBI does not have. And even if they did, it would take them months from receiving the source code to be even remotely prepared to do a custom iOS build to present to Apple to be signed. Domain expertise, familiarity with a code base, and just "simple" stuff like build/release engineering and QA aren't things you put together overnight.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153022

>You make this sound hard: there are tons of qualified people who could do this in less than a week, including myself. We already have all of these tools just sitting around from the iPhone 4, and some of us have emulators for more recent devices: the only thing we don't have is Apple's key.

From the developer of cydia.

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#125

Post by mkempe »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #103
HelloMcFly wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a most difficult time believing SCOTUS would deadlock on this issue as it should scratch the "personal property, limited government, narrow interpretation" itch of the conservative justices and the civil rights itch of the liberal justices.

Those same conservative justices who have no problem with eminent domain being used to enrich private entities.

Kelo:

- Dissent: O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas

- Dissent: Thomas

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#127

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

extesy wrote: post #109
banku_brougham wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-tech people read this site too. What % of the general population knows what sudo is? My auto-correct changes 'sudo' to 'Audi'. The real problem is that the xkcd reference doesn't explain what sudo means.

There's a site dedicated to explaining various xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/149:_Sandwich

we shouldn't be explaining something using the xkcd which doesn't illuminate the topic at all and further needs to be explained.

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#128

Post by justinmayer »

lmitchell wrote: post #115
maxander wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read much about legal cases and you'll quickly realize how little "the letter" of a law (or any other collection of words) really, unambiguously conveys. Context is a necessary fallback in the interpretation of law just as it is in day-to-day conversation. I haven't read this document in detail, but from what's quoted here it seems pretty obvious that the judge's argument isn't strong enough without reference to the…

This is the one thing I really took away from (way too much) recent reading about Scalia and textual originalism - in my opinion, it's almost downright foolish to obey 'the letter' of the original law, and it's completely right of anyone asked to judge based on the law to do just that. I think it'd be kind of stupid in this case in particular and in all cases in general to ignore the context surrounding the law, both…

Textual originalism is a euphemistic smokescreen, invoked to justify a position as "true" to the original intent even when the justice in question hands down opinions with no Constitutional basis. Scalia was a master at this deception, vehemently excoriating "activist" judges while simultaneously making logical leaps like "corporations are people" and "money is speech".

Textual originalism is largely a fraudulent mechanism for justifying a right-wing position.

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#129

Post by anaptdemise »

lmitchell wrote: post #115
maxander wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read much about legal cases and you'll quickly realize how little "the letter" of a law (or any other collection of words) really, unambiguously conveys. Context is a necessary fallback in the interpretation of law just as it is in day-to-day conversation. I haven't read this document in detail, but from what's quoted here it seems pretty obvious that the judge's argument isn't strong enough without reference to the…

This is the one thing I really took away from (way too much) recent reading about Scalia and textual originalism - in my opinion, it's almost downright foolish to obey 'the letter' of the original law, and it's completely right of anyone asked to judge based on the law to do just that. I think it'd be kind of stupid in this case in particular and in all cases in general to ignore the context surrounding the law, both…

Maybe the principle of the law; as opposed to the letter of the law. The legislature writes, literally, thousands of bad laws and SCOTS sees a handful of edge cases. I, as an optimist think that the individuals in the process of passing poorly written, or otherwise, compromised laws "have their hearts in the right place"(tm). It is the process, and our acceptance of the corruption of said, that justifies the creation of the separation of powers. No matter the intent, consolidation of power ultimately leads to corruption. "It is not power that corrupts. Possibly power allows the corruptible to show their true selves." For ultimate power is not having to say you're sorry, only that "I'm right. Full f*ckn.stop."

Or why else would CISPA, which was publicly denounced and failed to pass make it into a (budget bill)[http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibu...].

Democracy in action.

Edit: autocorrect of coorption

Re: Brooklyn Judge: Feds Can't Use All Writs Act to Force Apple's Hand [pdf]

#130

Post by zelcon5 »

matsur wrote: post #16

This seems to be the core point here — the US Code is a whitelist, not a blacklist: "The government's position also produces a wholly different kind of absurdity: the idea that the First Congress might so thoroughly undermine fundamental principles of the Constitution that many of its members had personally just helped to write or to ratify. Its preferred reading of the law – which allows a court to confer on the exe…

Am I the only one who sees how blind it is to continue citing 18th century politicians in 2016? Can we finally deprecate the "founding fathers"?
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