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So why did they push it so far? Was it really just a game of chicken where the FBI wanted to stare down Apple?
Would it be foolish to think they struck some kind of behind-the-doors deal with Apple?
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And lets screw over Apple by claiming that we can crack the phone after Apple claims that no one can. We'll never have to prove it, so we win, Apple loses.
I don't think Apple has claimed no one can crack the phone. That's not what this case was about.
FBI: We need Apple to hack this terrorist's phone Apple: We could, but we won't"
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> I suspect that the intelligence and law enforcement communities are afraid that if this case goes to the Supreme Court the All Writs Act may be scaled back or ruled unconstitutional. It's not that the act is unconstitutional, it's that the interpretation of it that the DoJ has been selling to magistrate judges in ex parte hearings is extremely broad and would never survive appeal. The Supreme Court has made it very…
They certainly got a clue they weren't going to win - so can Apple now do anything to push the case forward for judgement?
Here's one approach you could use if you had a reliable zero-day at your disposal. I've been out of the jailbreak scene for a while, so I might be way off the mark: 1) Have zero-day ([0]) that can be used to deliver executable payload over SMS (think Stagefright). iOS devices can receive text messages before the filesystem is decrypted. Perhaps Apple should close this vector. 2) Deploy dylib that patches the SpringBo…
Perhaps. However, it's very likely that receiving SMS before decryption is not a bug, but a feature.
So basically they're saying, "This isn't going according to plan. Let's wait for another opportunity and try again."
Until that happens, it seems like a very real risk to Apple's security claims.
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> I suspect that the intelligence and law enforcement communities are afraid that if this case goes to the Supreme Court the All Writs Act may be scaled back or ruled unconstitutional. It's not that the act is unconstitutional, it's that the interpretation of it that the DoJ has been selling to magistrate judges in ex parte hearings is extremely broad and would never survive appeal. The Supreme Court has made it very…
What powers would you say the AWA grants, then?
So, when it comes to wiretapping, there are specific statutes that authorize wiretapping in such-and-such circumstances. The court can then issue writs as needed to carry that out, provided the writs meet fairly narrow criteria (not overly burdensome, only targeted at an entity "close to" the case at hand, only targeted at an entity whose actions are "necessary" and where there's no other way to carry out the jurisdiction, rather than, say, just convenient) and the writ must have some kind of antecedent in common law, which is a somewhat fuzzy topic, but it boils down to "the writ can't just be pulled out of thin air, there's a set of traditional writs and it should appear to be consistent with that set".
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> Would you prefer that they try to force Apple's hand anyway, even though they might have found another way that makes the issue moot? Yes, very much so. That way we can put this behind us rather than to wait for the inevitable re-run with conditions carefully arranged to be more favorable in order to set precedent.
Their legal reasoning heavily relies on Apple being the only party capable of assisting with unlocking the phone. They are talking about compelling someone, so if there's a possibility that it's not necessary, they have a duty to find out. Also, US courts don't rule on abstract ideas or hypothetical cases. No "case or controversy", no judicial standing. If the FBI can unlock the device without compelling Apple, there…
See also:
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470347719/encryption-and-priva...
I suspect that the intelligence and law enforcement communities are afraid that if this case goes to the Supreme Court the All Writs Act may be scaled back or ruled unconstitutional. The All Writs Act goes back to 1789 and is used for all sorts of things, like wire tapping, obtaining call and ISP records, etc., and now trying to force Apple to make malware for their own phone. It's definitely a risk for the FBI to fi…
Last week the former US "cyber czar" Richard Clarke called the FBI out directly for doing it solely for legal precedent, and stated that virtually no one even in the gov't were on their side: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/former-cyber-czar... >>Clarke noted that Comey and the Justice Department were not getting support in their case from the defense and intelligence communities. "The Justice Department a…