All of this debate happened around the Clipper Chip in the 1990s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Sane people realized then that mediated security is no security at all.
Apple’s dangerous game
41–50 of 113 posts
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#42Earlier 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…
> there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved.
Your argument is that the approval rate could be 99% legitimately. Even if true it doesn't actually provide any evidence that judges are not acting as a rubber stamp, it only attempts to discount some evidence in favor of it. Moreover, the fact that the approval rate is 99% is still evidence that judges are not being very critical in approving warrants. The high rate makes it statistically more likely that judges are approving warrants uncritically than would be the case if the rate was lower.
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#43The arguments in this article are hinged on one crucial premise: Apple stills owns your device even after selling it to you. This is different from gmail where your data is on servers owned by google. The analogy to this premise is that the producers of a safe that they sell to you must be able to provide the government a key to the safe. This clearly does not make sense, and neither does requiring Apple to always ha…
The arguments in this article are hinged on one crucial premise: Apple stills owns your device even after selling it to you.
Hu? That idea isn't even mentioned in the article, and it seems entirely irrelevant.
The analogy to this premise is that the producers of a safe that they sell to you must be able to provide the government a key to the safe. This clearly does not make sense..
It may not make sense to you, but key escrow is a thing both for encryption keys[1] and for physical keys[2].
I agree there are pretty serious problems in both cases
[1] This is basically what happens in iOS 6 and below: Apple has a key they use to unlock the device. Another example is the aborted Clipper chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
[2] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/physical_key_...
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
99% seems too high. On the other hand, outright acquittals are very low in Germany, as well (as they should be).
Outright convictions for everything the prosecution charged are also not too common, but that the prosecutor deems something illegal and grave enough to charge, the court concurs by opening proceedings, and then in the trial everything falls completely apart basically only happens when the trial brings a complete surprise with it.
And most of those times the "complete surprise" is just a key witness refusing to testify or not remembering anymore (as it happens too often in domestic abuse cases).
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#45The article asks: > How is the public interest served by a policy that only thwarts lawful search warrants? Perhaps the answer is that judges act as rubber stamps now, authorizing way too many search warrants. The author assumes that the judges are fairly applying the 4th amendment.
I too was surprised by the author's question. It's as if he hasn't been following the news lately about the apparent impotence of the 4th amendment these days. Yet his wiki page says he "has been regarded as a leading scholar on Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in electronic communications and surveillance." In light of that, he comes across as extremely naive. (or worse?)
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#46So basically, the author wants every "secure" software system to have a backdoor. iOS versions prior to 8 all had a backdoor and he's lamenting that Apple has closed this backdoor. Not only that, if this applies to the iPhone, it must apply to any and all encryption software. While it's widely known that the government already has backdoors into a lot of popular software, codifying this in law or expecting that all software be built with backdoors is preposterous.
Furthermore, his feeble explanation of why this isn't a 5th Amendment issue doesn't stand up. The courts have so far come down on both sides of the issue, and while he cites one court case, there are others and other decisions that disagree (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/federal-appeals-court-fifth...). It's obvious that the author believes so strongly in the right of the government to have a backdoor that he ignores significant case law that does not back his viewpoint (I'm sure he's aware of it or he's a piss-poor law professor).
Because the author doesn't see this for what it is, a backdoor, he can't even begin to understand other, unforeseen consequences (such as criminals getting ahold of the decryption process) and even brushes off this issue early in the article.
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#47It's a catch 22. They'll be criticized, but they need to deploy much stronger security measures to show customers that they're not playing along and 'data-pimping'. Unfortunately for them it's probably too late. When open-source alternatives like ubuntu mobile and firefox os are ready for prime time, they stand to take a good market share, imho.
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#48Earlier 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.
Agree with vinceguidry. Is 99% above the "judge is no longer being critical" statistical threshold? How was that determined and where is it published?
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#49I think it is perfectly reasonable what Apple is doing. They are basically saying: Dear government. If you want us to make a backdoor in our software and setup a service to which you can send phones to have them unlocked, then please make a law that explictly forces us to do so.
Re: Apple’s dangerous game
#50Earlier 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…
> there's a perfectly good explanation for why 99% of warrants would be approved. Your argument is that the approval rate could be 99% legitimately. Even if true it doesn't actually provide any evidence that judges are not acting as a rubber stamp, it only attempts to discount some evidence in favor of it. Moreover, the fact that the approval rate is 99% is still evidence that judges are not being very critical in ap…
> Moreover, the fact that the approval rate is 99% is still evidence that judges are not being very critical in approving warrants.
No it is not.
> The high rate makes it statistically more likely that judges are approving warrants uncritically than would be the case if the rate was lower.
As I said in another sub-thread, you are going to have to explain the statistics involved if you want to make an argument from them. Otherwise you are just being circular. You cannot expect a statement to be its own proof.