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FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

thehill.com

211–220 of 417 posts

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that millions of Americans feel so strongly about gun ownership that they would rather be felons (and 'molon labe' their guns) than give them up.

Am I the only one who finds the use of "molon labe" farcical? I mean, the Persians did come and take them and killed the entire Spartan force in the process.

Meanwhile it allowed the rest of Greece to organize a defense and it also inspired them to fight, defeating their enemies later.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#212
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there are more firearms than people. About one-third of all households have at least one firearm [0]. The vast majority of these people have never had a serious brush with law enforcement, but some significant portion would refuse to part with their guns if a ban were enacted tomorrow. While it is said that nearly all Americans are felons [1], most Americans do not intentionally commit felonies or think of…

America has vast and currently unimpeachable rights to weaponry. There is a huge swath of policy space between that and banning gun ownership. We can reduce gun ownership, trafficking and weapon deadliness a thousand different ways while not adversely impacting legitimate usage. Universal background checks, limiting purchase frequency, banning 100-round barrels, increasing liability for dealers.

100 round barrels?

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#213

We (HN commenters) all know that the demonization of encryption is bullshit. What we need to do is to figure out how to communicate that effectively to the public.

Write a blog post about it, link to this discussion, post on social media, answer questions calmly and thoughtfully and without brushibg off people?

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s highly unlikely to work in the first place, not to mention likely cost as much as their annual operating budget.

Mostly the former. There’s nothing expensive about decapping a chip and tossing it under an electron microscope.

How much time and effort would it take to go from a chip under an electron microscope to the embedded crypto key, though? Seems like a substantial reverse engineering effort. (Although only for the first time you do a particular type of chip.)

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is, however, harder to automate If Apple does not give you the tools to decrypt messages on their phones, doesn't that make it "impossible" to automate, where automate is defined as any version of "decrypting the data on the phone"?

One thing to keep in mind is that really only two things Apple can do. The first is to release a modified and signed version of iOS to LE agencies that has any timeouts removed to allow them to try to bruteforce the passcode locks. If a user uses a significantly long password instead of a passcode, this becomes way less effective. The second thing is to log iMessage data on the server-side (since it has to be decrypt…

>The second thing is to log iMessage data on the server-side (since it has to be decrypted at some point).

iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, so that's also not an option. Apple would have to inject a key they controlled into a user's list of device keys. (Which they can do, and the UI doesn't notify users if it were to happen.)

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#216

We (HN commenters) all know that the demonization of encryption is bullshit. What we need to do is to figure out how to communicate that effectively to the public.

"Authorities want every house in America to be remodeled to include a second front door with a special government lock. They promise to only give police departments, contractors, and/or federal employees access to the single master key that can be instantly and easily copied and shared over the internet and opens every single house and business in America. Even if we trusted the government with this power, how could that go wrong?"

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#217
post #178
post #113

They also can’t access his brain. Neither of these situations are ones I feel compelled to fix.

I think this is a great analogy and easy for the layman to understand.

I agree. BUT - the response will be: “well even if we wanted to, we don’t have the technology to read his brain. we DO have the technology to read his phone, but you nerds are keeping it from us.”

(Disclaimer: I don’t agree with this position but I have a lot of friends who think the government can do no wrong)

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who finds the use of "molon labe" farcical? I mean, the Persians did come and take them and killed the entire Spartan force in the process.

It was a successful delaying action. They were outnumbered hundreds to one and never expected to defeat the entire enemy army themselves. They knew they were going to lose that battle, but the intent was to help win the overall war, which the Greeks did. And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got, which is a vic…

> And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got

Getting (benefitting) a lot more than you gave (spent) makes more sense to me.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has an extra page on that, which I took as the basis of my comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#Definitions To quote: " The term was originally defined as the murder of four or more people with no cooling-off period[1][5] but redefined by Congress in 2013 as being murder of three or more people." Not only that, at the risk of repeating myself, the page you criticize as being "disingenuous" c…

The term that you're quoting the US Congress definition of is "mass killing".

If someone commits a mass killing with a gun, then it becomes a mass shooting.

Frankly speaking, it's not clear what this thread is about. According to social constructivism, social reality might change by re-defining terms like "mass shooting", but according to my sense of reality the number of victims doesn't change at all. I can also see no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't base their lists on the 'most official' terms rather than making up their own, as long as they make clear that this includes multiple homicides by gun, which they do.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#220
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese and Russian governments already got access to every local device, even from Apple itself, We'll really need sources for claims like that...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/24/apple-moves-to-store-icloud-... * Nearly all iPhone users use iCloud. * If obeying 'local laws' is enough for Apple to allow external access to iCloud, the same logic must apply to the iPhone. * Note that Apple refused similar requests by American courts.

I really doubt nearly all iPhone users use iCloud. The ones on Hacker News might. I think a regular person would just shrug at prompts to set it up.

I feel like most times I hear iCloud mentioned by non techies they are confused about what it is. Like when their storage is out and they get nagged about it.

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