Apple’s dangerous game • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#31

Post by RickHull » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:10 AM UTC

Orin Kerr is clearly a lawyer. He argues not for what is right but for what is permissible given the existing body of law. Where the existing body of law is wrong, his writings have no sympathy for the damage inflicted on its victims nor any sense that resisting such wrongs is noble.

If the government never abused its authority, I would be much more sympathetic to Kerr's position. Given the facts of prosecutorial abuse, vague and conflicting laws, the ongoing gutting / suspension of habeas corpus, "three felonies a day" -- http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.asp... -- and many more reasons not to rest moral authority on our body of law, I find his insistence that we revere lawfulness to be foolish at best. It's important to stand up to unjust laws.

Leaving aside warrants which are merely held to be lawful (where the true facts, might we know them, show the opposite), it's not just lawful warrants that this technology protects against. Law-abiding citizens may be compelled to reveal private information via totally unjust mechanisms such as National Security Letters. Consider Nick Merrill's experience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Merrill#Challenging_th...

Also http://techpresident.com/news/24272/nick-merrill-fought-fbi-...

Let's not even get into protecting yourself from the NSA. Any tools which help us resist such tyranny, even at the risk and expense of civil disobedience, are to be applauded. Reserve your condemnation for the John Yoo of the tech world.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#32

Post by bhashkarsharma » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:10 AM UTC

With all due respect, being somewhat of a privacy and security freak (although I use social networks etc.), all I can read while going through the article is a crybaby whining about how it is harder than before to get user data.

The article makes an assumption that the warrants and the snooping is only done in legal and genuine cases, which has been continuously been proved wrong lately. Not to mention all the secret courts, FISA orders etc

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#33

Post by iaw » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:11 AM UTC

This seems likely to be more than a little related to the recent warrant canary discovery. My expectation is that Apple was recently forced to do something they considered unlawful and the iOS8 changes will prevent that issue in the future.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#34

Post by foobarqux » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #30

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> judges act as rubber stamps now Exactly. Our government is as overbearing and oppressive as it's been in a very long time. I read somewhere that judges approve something like 99% of the search warrants presented to them. They no longer serve as a check on law enforcement. I'd love to hear otherwise, to hear how judges are doing a good job balancing the interests of people against the interests of law enforcement.

I did not downvote you, but there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved. Consider that the police know what warrants a judge is likely to approve and which he's likely to turn down. Over time, police departments will learn to submit the warrants they can get approved and not bother wasting a judge's time with warrants that won't be approved. So very high approval rates do not necess…

You could say the same thing about many aspects of the law (e.g. pursuing prosecution) but none have a 99% success rate.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#35

Post by kenrikm » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:13 AM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #30

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> judges act as rubber stamps now Exactly. Our government is as overbearing and oppressive as it's been in a very long time. I read somewhere that judges approve something like 99% of the search warrants presented to them. They no longer serve as a check on law enforcement. I'd love to hear otherwise, to hear how judges are doing a good job balancing the interests of people against the interests of law enforcement.

I did not downvote you, but there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved. Consider that the police know what warrants a judge is likely to approve and which he's likely to turn down. Over time, police departments will learn to submit the warrants they can get approved and not bother wasting a judge's time with warrants that won't be approved. So very high approval rates do not necess…

99% is not "just" "optimized" police departments. Something else is up, statistically it does not make sense.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#36

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #34

vinceguidry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote you, but there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved. Consider that the police know what warrants a judge is likely to approve and which he's likely to turn down. Over time, police departments will learn to submit the warrants they can get approved and not bother wasting a judge's time with warrants that won't be approved. So very high approval rates do not necess…

You could say the same thing about many aspects of the law (e.g. pursuing prosecution) but none have a 99% success rate.

You can not say that about pursuing prosecution, as that is at least intended to be an adversarial process, anomalously high conviction rates do indicate to me a corruption of justice proceedings. Acquittals in China are quite rare, for instance. The reason is that the CPC considers itself the source of justice and sees no issue with doing away with impartiality in matters of political importance.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#37

Post by foobarqux » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:16 AM UTC

Kerr's argument sounds silly when you use analogies with conventional devices. Nobody would argue that a highly secure safe should have a backdoor that can be used by the manufacturer to open it.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#38

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:17 AM UTC

kenrikm wrote: post #35

vinceguidry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote you, but there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved. Consider that the police know what warrants a judge is likely to approve and which he's likely to turn down. Over time, police departments will learn to submit the warrants they can get approved and not bother wasting a judge's time with warrants that won't be approved. So very high approval rates do not necess…

99% is not "just" "optimized" police departments. Something else is up, statistically it does not make sense.

You're going to have to explain the statistics involved if you want to make an argument from them.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#39

Post by microcolonel » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:24 AM UTC

I think it's hard for a lawyer, who has to say things like "If I understand how it works" before speaking about a topic, to understand that it is infeasible to create a system which is both secure in general, and insecure when the government wants something. These changes are likely in response not only to public distrust in institutions like NSA, but also to existing general threats to the security model of previous iOS releases, which like any system with a backdoor, have the potential for the backdoor to be used nefariously.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#40

Post by function_seven » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 4:26 AM UTC

abalone wrote: post #19

Is this actually new in iOS 8? I thought this has been the design of iMessage from the beginning -- namely that Apple does not have the decryption keys. What Apple does have is the directory of recipient public keys that your device should use to encrypt its messages. (Background: iMessage encrypts each message separately for every recipient device, which shows just how far Apple went to protect key security. Not onl…

The article is referring to the contents of the phone's storage, not iMessage. Apparently before iOS 8, Apple could decrypt the contents of a phone's storage, and would do so when presented a warrant.