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The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

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Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#191

Post by netcan »

Ntrails wrote: post #179
netcan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think you need to go that far, with extreme examples of totalitarianism. I'm not American, so obviously I'm less emotionally involved. My view on it is that the US is not under any meaningful threat of terrorism. 9/11 was big, but on the scale of decades it is still far down the likelihood list of violent ways an American may be harmed. Murder, Rape and other assaults are a reality too, a far more likely…

I have never understood how rarely attacks occur. I think of the places I visit in London, and the volume of people, and I conclude that there is simply no shortage of opportunity to create casualties of at least 3 figures. So my question becomes, do the supposed large swathes of angry terrorists not want to damage it in traditional terrorist attacks, or are they being prevented from doing so by the security services…

Some are, just like other crimes. There just isn't very much terrorism outside of civil war/independence war type situations. It's not a common type of violence. It never really was.

Just try applying the same logic you apply to other horrible problems which are dealt with but never fully eradicated. Pedophilia. It's a crime. Many cases are foiled. Many are not.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#192

Post by aaronem »

wisty wrote: post #168
enkephalin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did people expect them to be a spy organization that was incompetent? i'm guessing most people thought that spying of US agencies was an activity that was carried out abroad, and aimed at real threats.

When terrorism in the big concern, droid strikes are used against real threats. General espionage is used to figure out what the real threats are. I guess they'd still be hoovering up everything they could, just in case, if it weren't for the threat of terrorism. Public opinion is strategically important (if a foreign power starts a war, how will their people react?), but it wouldn't be so important.

> droid strikes

Next on the NSA revelations list: A backdoor software "implant" capable of exploiting holes in everything from Froyo to KitKat, and which subverts the device's power management circuitry, such that a remote command can short-circuit and overheat the battery. Results, and especially the likelihood of explosion, depend strongly on battery capacity and charge state, but in-house testing suggests probability of fire should be ca. 95%+ across all device models susceptible to the implant.

(Speaking of which: "Implant", I like that choice of term, it's got just the cyberpunk flavor today's world needs.)

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#193

Post by Zigurd »

sigzero wrote: post #150
Touche wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. I disagree, the article implies that Apple might (probably?) is helping them with their spying. This is not a minor point for me. I think it's very important to expose which tech companies are betraying their customers, and conversely which are not.

No, the article didn't imply that. "Here’s a problem: I don’t really believe that Apple didn’t help them." That is a bullshit statement. It is pure speculation without a SHRED of facts to back it up.

There are many shades of gray in manufacturers helping the NSA to hack their products: from outright creating back doors, to using gimpy RNGs, to revealing bugs to the NSA before otherwise disclosing them, to using peripherals with back doors. Deniability and cover stories are part and parcel with such work. It is naive to claim it simply isn't happening.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#194

Post by aaronem »

el-mapache wrote: post #174
leephillips wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Who really thought the NSA would try to subvert the cryptographic standards they pretend to create" I first encountered speculation that this was the case in a textbook from 1986, in a chapter discussing encryption algorithms in wide use that were contributed to by the NSA. "Who really thought they'd go to US service and hardware companies and ask them to implement backdoors" The fascinating book The Puzzle Palace ,…

None of this is surprising to an extremely small subset of the global population, those who have had the means to study computer science and cryptography, and the history(ies) of government sanctioned spy agencies for a long enough period to be able to glean insights into the future behaviour of said agencies. Since not everyone who reads this site meets those criteria, I suspect that it is even a not-insignificant s…

You might find it helps to mentally (or programmatically) replace every instance of NSA, and its various expansions, with the name of that agency's direct lineal predecessor, which existed in a time when bureaucratic circumlocution was far less pervasive, and which could therefore rejoice in such an ominously portentous name as "the Black Chamber."

To see the effect, let's try it with some headlines I've just cherry-picked from a Google search results page for purposes of demonstration:

"Black Chamber team spies, hacks to gather intelligence on targets, report says"

"Appelbaum: 'Scary' Black Chamber will spy on you – every which way they can ..."

"Black Chamber Secret Toolbox: ANT Unit Offers Spy Gadgets for Every Need ..."

"Black Chamber 'spying on Europe-Asia undersea telecom cables' - Yahoo News"

"The Black Chamber Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center"

"Black Chamber can spy on offline computers wirelessly, says security expert"

"A Peek Inside the Black Chamber's Spy Gear Catalog"

"Report: Black Chamber intercepts computer deliveries"

"Black Chamber targets foreigners, catches Americans: Column"

I mean, how can you not love a name like that? You can't even say it in an ordinary tone of voice. See for yourself! No matter how you try, you'll find yourself saying not merely "the Black Chamber," but...the Black Chamber.

I think an official change of name is long overdue.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#195

Post by Zigurd »

JunkDNA wrote: post #156
salient wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I don't think anyone except "tinfoil hats" really imagined the scale of NSA spying. Who really thought the NSA would try to subvert the cryptographic standards they pretend to create to "secure systems"? Who really thought they'd go to US service and hardware companies and ask them to implement backdoors for them? Also, there's a big difference between letting NSA protect US against Real Threats - real nat…

But my issue is that very little in the slides released by Der Spiegel talks about the actual targets where devices were employed. There is the Internet dragnet stuff which is rightly worrisome, but the vast majority of the slides are similar to the one about the iPhone and detail targeted exploits: specific phones, specific servers, specific routers. Targeted spying on real threats requires those capabilities. Unfor…

Some of these items need to be deployed with "black bag jobs" and that has some natural limits. Still, we know that people like Martin Luther King were the targets of dirty tricks campaigns, and that the treatment of people like Jacob Appelbaum indicate such dirty tricks are still in play.

There are enough prominent technology and finance people reading this who back controversial and truly disruptive technologies like bitcoin, biotech hacker spaces, open source crypto, etc. that they may have a reasonable concern about being a target.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#196

Post by pasbesoin »

JunkDNA wrote: post #142

I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. The big message from Jacob's talk and the original articles in Der Spiegel is that the NSA can intercept anything. Period. Full stop. People have suspected such far reaching capabilities for some time. This talk and the articles demonstrate that it exists. I'm personally a little uncomfortable with this kind of disclosure. On…

In a severe but perhaps useful reduction, look at what this and other "secretive" activity appears in conjunction with. Arguments might thereupon be promoted, that it is also "in support of".

Increasing income disparity. Exposure to versus shelter from the legal system and justice -- as stated in the U.S. in published, public laws and mounted through public, accountable law enforcement activities. Freedom of movement, or constraint of same (e.g. the secret, unaudit-able, un-appealable, unaccountable no-fly list). Etc.

I'd argue that, in the large, a democratic society is based upon the willing participation of its members. Who share in responsibility for its security.

What is being created seems already to be, and regardless of ones opinion of current circumstances, capable of being made into and becoming, rather something else.

In other words, "equality before the law" already seems to be going out the window. (Well, that has always been somewhat of a myth, but, in many opinions, it seems to be getting worse.) Our democratic societies deserve and need to know about this, for the sake of remaining democratic.

And it's time to pull out a potent word in description of what has been and is going on: Hypocrisy.

Our leaders actions and their words -- platitudes -- do not align.

And it's time for us to think hard about whether our own do.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#197

Post by Nursie »

allochthon wrote: post #187
Nursie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're not concerned about the government themselves having a bad security record and leaking all the data they gather on you, either? (government leaks data all the time) Or someone in government deciding to stalk you? (this has happened, within the NSA I believe, but certainly in other places) Or someone deciding they dislike you and using your information to pursue frivolous legal action? (You never broke any l…

You make a great point about data leaking out. My position isn't that I don't care about privacy. It's that in the modern age, with so much information kept about people in corporate and government databases, we're necessarily talking about mitigation rather than a pure ideal of full privacy. I assume the NSA can access my records with the IRS or my bank anytime they wish, even if they were prevented by law from tapp…

>> If I permit that much, now we're talking about degrees rather than absolutes, and we're arguing about where to draw the line.

We're always talking about where to draw the line, in basically everything worth debating about, ever. There are very few absolutes in life and I think that opting out of the discussion by saying "Well, we're just deciding where to put the line" is a total cop-out.

Where we put the line is important, and where we place our priorities. "Preventing terrorist attacks" sounds very noble, until you add up all the harm that's been done in pursuit of that goal. And remember - there's no compelling evidence that the NSA mass data-gathering activities have actually prevented any attacks.

>> In the battles I choose to take on, rolling back an NSA iPhone compromise is an interesting idea, but it is less a priority than other battles, such as protecting dissidents in oppressive countries (which is also a relevant contrast to the point I first made, as has been mentioned elsewhere)

I don't know how you can't see that these are the same thing. The iPhone compromise, if such exists, further endangers dissidents in oppressive countries, not to mention dissidents in countries we don't consider overtly oppressive, like our own.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#198

Post by Create »

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html

http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#199

Post by sentenza »

JunkDNA wrote: post #157
Touche wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know this headline generates traffic by being about the iPhone, but this is a minor point. I disagree, the article implies that Apple might (probably?) is helping them with their spying. This is not a minor point for me. I think it's very important to expose which tech companies are betraying their customers, and conversely which are not.

Jacob made this assertion in his talk but presented no evidence. He explicitly said he wanted to call out the companies because they should be held accountable if they were complicit in this. But no evidence was presented that any of the hardware companies were coordinating with the NSA. Given that jail breaking continues to exist, it is entirely possible that Apple and other companies are victims of security exploit…

Some clarification from the companies would certainly be nice, but for me and many others, the damage has already been done.

If you start your company today and put all your stuff on newly bought Apple machines (or Windows boxen), in case your stuff is stolen by the NSA or GCHQ or whoever in five years time, you will recieve (and deserve?) little compassion: When you complain, people will tell you that you should have known. After all, you started after the Snowden affair caused "all of us" to lose trust in these companies.

I'm starting to arrange myself with the "new" situation to maintain my sanity. If there is some life-or-death info, that should go into a crypto-container on an airgap linux box. For everything else, I'll have to become accustomed to the thought that there is someone out there who can get at it if they want and that all my efforts can make it only marginally more difficult for them.

Re: The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

#200

Post by allochthon »

Nursie wrote: post #197
allochthon wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a great point about data leaking out. My position isn't that I don't care about privacy. It's that in the modern age, with so much information kept about people in corporate and government databases, we're necessarily talking about mitigation rather than a pure ideal of full privacy. I assume the NSA can access my records with the IRS or my bank anytime they wish, even if they were prevented by law from tapp…

>> If I permit that much, now we're talking about degrees rather than absolutes, and we're arguing about where to draw the line. We're always talking about where to draw the line, in basically everything worth debating about, ever. There are very few absolutes in life and I think that opting out of the discussion by saying "Well, we're just deciding where to put the line" is a total cop-out. Where we put the line is…

The iPhone compromise, if such exists, further endangers dissidents in oppressive countries

I've implicitly acknowledged this point.

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