Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thehill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 417 posts

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

#261

Post by johnnyapol »

wool_gather wrote: post #249
johnnyapol wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They wouldn't be able to install the new OS over the old one without the passcode, though.

Not sure if things are in a similar state now, but it looks like the FBI and Apple had reason to believe something like this could be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

Although it seems like it would be a RAM-only thing

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

#262

Post by dogma1138 »

mikeash wrote: post #214
kube-system wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

An electron microscope alone won’t work not to mention you have a high likelihood of damaging to chip as the voltage of the electrons deposited on the sample can exceed what the IC can tolerate.

You need a cryo probing station of some sort I’m not sure if these even exist for 12/10/7nm logic yet.

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

#263

Post by wool_gather »

whatthesmack wrote: post #224
tootie wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trouble with those policies (aside from 100-round barrels... I have no idea what that means, and I don’t think you do either) is that they’re often-mentioned, but people forget to ask the question, “Have these policies actually improved anything where they’ve been implemented?” Many of the recently-publicized shootings in the US have occurred in California, which has some of the most strict firearms laws in the n…

> Why guns are the hot-button issue and heart disease isn’t plastered over the media 24/7?

Heart disease does get public attention -- check your breakfast cereal, as a banal example: odds are it touts its "heart healthiness" -- and gun control isn't 24/7 either.

But there are a few components to consider. One is that gun deaths are traumatic beyond the impact of just the death. The murder of someone you love, where another human being willfully ended their life, is a whole different thing to process psychologically than their death after an illness or even in an accident. Can we reduce those ripples of harm by preventing these murders?

That "willful" bit is important too: a gun enables a person to kill a bunch of other people. Should our society make that enabling easy? Heart disease isn't perpetrated by one person on another. And, yes, you can kill a lot of people at once with a car, too. But a gun's entire purpose is killing; aside from that and sport shooting it's useless. A car is actually better for just visiting grandma or picking up groceries than being a murder weapon.

And the most important point is to rebut the relative privation that you've presented: of course the other causes of death are a problem. That doesn't preclude dealing with this one. Gun control advocates believe that there are obvious, straightforward measures that we're not taking advantage of that can reduce gun violence. Are there such measures for the flu?

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

#264

Post by giardini »

samsonradu wrote: post #111
kabdib wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is politically more feasible to ban encryption in the US than it is to ban guns (or even significantly restrict them). Wait, I'm wrong. Even essentially insignificant changes to gun laws at the federal level are harder than banning crypto.

Can you please elaborate on why guns are so sacred in the US? Is it for cultural/historical reasons?

samsonradu asks> "Can you please elaborate on why guns are so sacred in the US? Is it for cultural/historical reasons?"

FWIW use of the term "sacred" is somewhat iffy as many an atheist has picked up a gun to defend himself.

America was taken over and settled by Europeans who brought firearms for hunting and protection. There were already 20-100 million indigenous American Indians here: they covered the land. But the Europeans brought diseases that few American Indians had resistance to, and most (up to 90%) of the American Indians died of disease before they had so much as _seen_ a white man. Indian societies collapsed and re-coalesced from the fragments. Meanwhile...

https://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-...

Newly-arrived Europeans advanced into a "wilderness" that held the burnt-out remnants of multiple civilizations. Only the very earliest arrivals saw the destruction their diseases had wrought in front of their advance.

With the Europeans came ideas of real estate (ownership rights to land etc.) which the American Indian tribes previously maintained by allegiances and territorial behavior. Anyway, conflicts ensued, new allegiances formed, broke and reformed. This all involved conflicts, fighting and wars. In every step, guns were used by both sides (e.g., American-Indian Wars, Revolutionary War, Civil War).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_campaigns

Early settlers were often on their own. They often had disputes and unpleasant encounters with their own and others. The gun could be used for protection as well as an important food-gathering tool. Although the American Indians could do so easily, living in the wilderness without a firearm was difficult and rare for someone of European descent.

So the use of firearms goes back to the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Guns were always available in the New World and remain available today.

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

#265

Post by word-reader »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #162
randallsquared wrote: post #157

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…

Why do you assume a ban would take effect "suddenly"? As you rightly point out, it would make no sense to apply a gun ban instantly, tricking millions of Americans into technically becoming felons.

The Trump administration actually did this with bump stocks with an administrative determination that bump stocks constitute an automatic weapon. Granted, it wasn't millions, but probably at least tens of thousands of people had a few weeks notice to destroy their bump stocks or be in felony possession of an automatic weapon. At the federal level, this is already more gun control than the Obama administration implemented.

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

#266

Post by wool_gather »

johnnyapol wrote: post #261
wool_gather wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't be able to install the new OS over the old one without the passcode, though.

Not sure if things are in a similar state now, but it looks like the FBI and Apple had reason to believe something like this could be done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... Although it seems like it would be a RAM-only thing

I suppose that's true, potentially they could release a new firmware or OS that would enable this in the future.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

weberc2 wrote: post #123
bredren wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t just detective work, it is personnel with the skills to identify and pursue likely evidence. Digital forensics is way outside typical leo training and believe it or not you can make a lot more money in the private sector with IT training. Local, state and federal case loads get backlogged behind, leaving the highest priority cases to get staffed.

What stops LEO from contracting with a digital forensic company or consultancy?

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by dymk »

pdkl95 wrote: post #49

> Attorney General William Barr said in a speech last month that encrypted messaging services allow "criminals to operate with impunity." The cost of encryption is “ultimately measured in a mounting number of victims — men, women and children who are the victims of crimes, crimes that could have been prevented if law enforcement had been given lawful access to encrypted evidence," This disgraceful, emotionally manipu…

Maybe they can’t build a profile via ad tracking, because ad tracking isn’t as invasive/doesn’t collect data which can be tied back to a specific name.

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

#269

Post by tomschlick »

tootie wrote: post #208
CydeWeys wrote: post #166

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.

We don't have to take anyone's guns. Even if we made some currently legal weapons illegal, just grandfather current ones and let attrition weed them out. I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.

> I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.

Guns last a lot longer than 30 years. 80-120 years sounds more like it. They are not going away anytime soon even if you do ban them (which wont happen).

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

#270

Post by word-reader »

coldtea wrote: post #229
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes more sense in context, take Patrick Henry's words in 1775 to understand what liberty and the preservation of constitutional rights means to Americans. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" or Thomas Jefferson in 1787: "We have had 13. states…

That was at a time when wars were fought with such arms, and the police had the same. Heck, that was true for 100+ years afterwards still. Now the police even has tanks and army level guns, and the army of course has 1000x the resources, airplanes, drones, etc. And of course, at the time the states were indeed independent and fighting fiercely for that. Now (and ever after the Civil War) it's all a charade, from what…

In your reading, guns used to be able to preserve liberty, but now they're irrelevant because the state security forces can just brutally crush any resistance with their superior firepower? That's not good rhetoric, and it's not even true! Just look at the success all those tanks and airplanes and trillions of dollars had in Afghanistan, for example. I also disagree with the finer points of "guns means freedom", but I don't think yours is a valid argument.
Post reply on HN