FBI Paid More Than $1M to Hack San Bernardino iPhone

Post by ddebernardy » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #41

aidanhs wrote: post #7

To me this raises a question about selling security vulnerabilities to state actors in general (in the context of the Facebook vulnerability thread where the standard discussion about value is being hashed out). Specifically, I live in the UK and one of the complaints law enforcement has is that US companies can (and do) totally ignore valid court orders because they don't apply in the US (reddit being an arbitrary c…

> Specifically, I live in the UK and one of the complaints law enforcement has is that US companies can (and do) totally ignore valid court orders because they don't apply in the US (reddit being an arbitrary concrete example). A US company (or individual) should absolutely ignore court orders from a non-US court; such courts have no jurisdiction. A "valid" court order necessarily must come from a court with jurisdic…

Post by GeechieCloud » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #38

Aelinsaar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy is false. They didn't have to do this, and by all accounts, received nothing of value for the money.

> by all accounts, received nothing of value for the money How can you know that?

Post by coldcode » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

belltaco wrote: post #11

agsimeonov wrote: post #6

Were they going to pay Apple if they had somehow forced them to do the deed?

Example: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/verizon-att-get-most-bucks-from-... >AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to C…

Post by orky56 » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 10:36 PM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #42

oneloop wrote: post #12

Same article on the FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af23e3ea-07f1-11e6-b6d3-746f8e9cdd... James Comey, director of the FBI, said on Thursday that the cost was “worth it”, but added that an accommodation needed to be made with Apple and other technology companies in the future, as paying outside technologists to find ways to access highly-encrypted messages on phones used by terrorist suspects was not “scalable.”

I see two ways to interpret what he said, and I'm kind of appalled at both interpretations: (1) "We can't afford to pay someone every time we need to bypass security, therefore we need the ability to force third parties to do this work for free": um, OK. -or- (2) "Bypassing security takes too much time and effort, therefore we need a backdoor": even more horrifying, even though he's repeatedly denied that this is the…

Post by amalcon » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 10:40 PM UTC

kureikain wrote: post #34

Where did that $1M come from? If it's from tax I'll say that a big waste.