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Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Well, Obama agrees with the OP, but not just for national security reasons. He thinks they need to be able to access our phone data any time they want for tax reasons: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/obama-says-ca ... nance.html.

Did you really, intentionally mean to equate me with Barack Hussein Obama?

No, I did not. But I DID point out that once the back door is out of the bag that Apple has kept it in, it is rife for abuse under other "justifications". Laws of unintended consequences, and all that — which is exactly why I have remained so intractable on the issue. What you, however mistakenly from my view, intend for good, someone else (in this case Obama) will use for evil.

Understood. Only time will tell. I maintain my belief that Hillary will eventually be indicted as well.

We can hope and pray that her evil is exposed in a court of law, resulting in a conviction.

Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Well, Obama agrees with the OP, but not just for national security reasons. He thinks they need to be able to access our phone data any time they want for tax reasons: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/obama-says-ca ... nance.html.

Did you really, intentionally mean to equate me with Barack Hussein Obama?

No, I did not. But I DID point out that once the back door is out of the bag that Apple has kept it in, it is rife for abuse under other "justifications". Laws of unintended consequences, and all that — which is exactly why I have remained so intractable on the issue. What you, however mistakenly from my view, intend for good, someone else (in this case Obama) will use for evil.

Well, Obama agrees with the OP, but not just for national security reasons. He thinks they need to be able to access our phone data any time they want for tax reasons: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/obama-says-ca ... nance.html.

Former NSA Chief Skeptical of FBI's Backdoor Demand
http://patriotpost.us/posts/40910

No less than Michael Hayden, the former chief of both the NSA and CIA as well as a retired four-star Air Force general, isn’t convinced the government is right. “In this specific case,” he said, “I’m trending toward the government, but I’ve got to tell you in general I oppose the government’s effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey. Jim would like a backdoor available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim’s job a bit easier in some specific circumstances.”

..........

Hayden also said rather honestly, “Look, I used to run the NSA, okay? Backdoors are good. Please, please, Lord, put back doors in, because I and a whole bunch of other talented security services around the world — even though that back door was not intended for me — that backdoor will make it easier for me to do what I want to do, which is to penetrate. … But when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without backdoors [because] a lot of other people would take advantage of it.”

.....Written by someone who used to run NSA, and who agrees with Bitter that these federal agencies are largely staffed by patriotic people of high integrity, and that having these backdoors would make their jobs easier.....but who still thinks it is a bad idea.

warnmar10 wrote:

There's more than just one iPhone the US wants to access
Remember when the head of the FBI swore blind that authorities only wanted backdoor access to the iPhone in this one, special case? Turns out that his friends over at the Justice Department just blew that claim miles out of the water. The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the DOJ is currently pushing court cases to get access to the data on no less than 12 different iPhones. The paper's sources say that officials are using the All Writs Act, the same 18th-century law that the FBI feels justifies its request for a backdoor.

Update: Bloomberg has seen freshly-opened court documents that relate to the mythical 12 iPhones that the Justice Department is targeting. The devices are covered by nine different access requests, although specific details about the individual cases remain under wraps.

Not all are terror related.

Another viewpoint: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2016/02/ ... fbi-fight/

Bitter Clinger wrote:And yes, I have worked in industries where the government could be trusted and with individuals who exhibited the highest standards of decency, loyalty and patriotism. This may make me a dinosaur given our current POTUS and his DOJ appointees. My immediate family has provided similar service. None of those oaths that we gave have ever been violated.

I have no doubt that what you're saying here was true......at one time. We are ALL dinosaurs given our current POTUS and his DOJ appointees. We are facing the following prospect on Friday, January 20, 2017.......less than a year from now:

1. Bernie Sanders will be sworn in as POTUS, or
2. Hillary Clinton will be sworn in as POTUS, or
3. barring some unseen catastrophe to his prospects, Donald Trump will be sworn in.

None of those three engender confidence in a return to Constitutional gov't.......and yet, the odds are that one of THEM will be the one entrusted with that power, after Obama has already had it for a while: a socialist who thinks that gov't isn't big and powerful enough, a closet socialist who accepts bribes from foreign gov'ts and abuses the term "secret", and a serial philanderer who loves Kilo v. City of New London because it helps billionaires kick the little people off their land so he can develop casinos.

We are freakin' doomed already. Giving one of those twits this kind of power would be a coup do grace. I wonder what Bill Gates has been threatened with?

I'm done.

Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:If you build it gov't will use it. As far as the families of the victims, I sympathize, but that is the SAME argument that the families of the Sandyhook school shooting victims used to argue that so-called "assault weapons" should be banned.

It's not all Apple by the way. Microsoft and Google are backing Apple's play. No.....it's NOT about me. It's about the Constitution.

You are smarter than that. It is not the same argument as that used by gun grabbers - there is no 2nd Amendment for the right to bear phones. Don't wrap this in the Constitution, call it what it is, a legitimate difference in opinion. And pray if it goes your way no one else is murdered. Phones don't kill, terrorists whose opsec is protected by naivety kills.

My constitutional argument is not founded in naiveté. No, there is no right to keep and bear cellphones (and neither did I say there was, anywhere in my post), but there most definitely IS a 4th Amendment right to be free from unwarranted intrusions into our personal effects and papers. It is, among other things, why we can put locks on our doors, and cops have to go get warrants and serve them in order to pop those locks off......EVEN when they suspect that criminals live in that house. And Apple (and Google, and Microsoft) maintain that what gov't is asking for cannot be accomplished without writing a back door into the phone software. I have a 4th Amendment right. I do not want Apple (and Google and Microsoft) to write back doors into their operating systems that will give gov't the ability to exploit that back door at gov't's whim. You make dire warnings of terrorist murders if I get my way. I don't accept that. Those murders are on the murderers heads. You seem to have great faith in the integrity of gov't. I do not. Gov't can't secure our borders. It cannot successfully prosecute a malfeasant AG who sells guns to narco-traffikers. It cannot successful stop dead people from voting.

Is there some risk to the public if gov't can't hack our phones any time they want to? Sure, there is. But a gov't which can mitigate all risks can only do so by suppressing the liberties its citizens. The freedom from unnecessary intrusions into our private affairs (including on our cellphones) is one of those liberties which the 4th Amendment guarantees. It is no longer a guarantee when gov't can violate it at will. What the FBI is trying to force Apple to do gives them that ability. They shouldn't have it. You started this thread by saying that this is why you'll never buy any Apple products. Does your anger over this also mean that you'll never buy an Android or Microsoft phone....since they are backing Apple's play? Anyway, that's my position. You and I differ on it, that's all.

So we are at an impasse. You're a good guy Bitter, and I don't want to fight with you.

BTW, did you read that link I posted? Here it is again: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231146. Here's another quote from it:

The current Apple flap is not really about that particular phone. There is a general problem with encryption keys in that short passwords and such are not really the key; rather, they unlock a key. That's algorithmic and thus where the key is actually stored becomes the big issue. Without hardware backing that secures said key in a way that if tampered with immediate and permanent destruction occurs you can dump the contents of the flash memory that's in the device and pick through it at your leisure.

In other words I believe the FBI is lying when they claim they cannot recover the data via any other means, simply on the known and published architectural differences between the OS on the phone and later versions of Apple's hardware and software. Push comes to shove they should be able to dump the NV image from the phone which contains the hash of the pin because that device has no separate hardware keystore, load it on an emulated device and hack away. Since there are only 10,000 possibilities and the encryption algorithm can be determined from disassembly of the object code performing such a test "offline" is trivial. The instruction set of the iPhone processor is not a secret; it's well-documented and open to the public.

This is not true for more-modern devices, but my understanding is that the version of IOS on the subject phone is IOS7. Because IOS7 was built to run on the iPhone 4 which has a (relatively crappy) processor it did not protect "everything" on the device -- probably for performance reasons. IOS8+ not only does it also, on newer devices, uses a hardware keystore which makes what the FBI is asking for worthless on such devices. Further, that implies that the data the FBI wants may not be encrypted at all in said flash memory!

Second, there's a bigger issue here with the FBI demand, which is that of chain-of-custody and forensics. The first principle of forensics is that you cannot modify that which you are examining and, if you ever intend to use said information in court you had better be able to prove that you didn't.

Etc., etc., etc. In other words, because the subject phone is iOS 7, it does not require Apple to crack it. The FBI can do it themselves with existing technology they already have, and they should already know that. So what they are actually asking for is for Apple to write a back door into iOS 8, without having a need for it within the context of the San Bernardino terrorism case. They are trying to force Apple to do it for future use. When they are done with Apple, they'll do the same to Google and Microsoft. When they're done......the US mobile phone manufacturing industry will be dead and buried, as customers desert them for foreign made products with better security.

If you build it gov't will use it. As far as the families of the victims, I sympathize, but that is the SAME argument that the families of the Sandyhook school shooting victims used to argue that so-called "assault weapons" should be banned.

It's not all Apple by the way. Microsoft and Google are backing Apple's play. No.....it's NOT about me. It's about the Constitution.

ScottDLS wrote:This is the Clinton Era "Clipper Chip" all over again.

Someone just sent me a link to the details of that story: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231146

The intent was, of course, that if and when the time came that the government had a "lawful" reason to intercept data it could use said escrowed key to get into whatever they wanted to.

But there were several problems. First was arguably the most-serious, which was that the chip's design was done under NSA auspice and considered a state secret. That's right -- it was actually classified at the SECRET level, which of course allegedly forbade anyone not holding said clearance from having any knowledge of how it worked. That was a fanciful load of crap then and it remains one now; Hillary has proved this hundreds of times with her little email server that had resident on it, unencrypted, SECRET (and above) emails.

Never mind that our government can't even manage to keep OPM records secure; there are a lot of people (like virtually everyone) that holds a clearance that has had their personal data, including fingerprints, stolen by the Chinese and, probably the Russians. Like an encryption key that is hard-wired into a chip once a fingerprint is stolen you can't change it and as such the compromise is permanent.

Then, a bit later, it was discovered that the NSA design was incompetent besides and the chip could be tricked. At that point the entire scheme collapsed around the government's ears.

Ironically, between this story and the fact that the San Berdoo terrorist's phone was in FBI possession when the employer reset the password, thereby essentially locking up the data on it, the ONE thing we have going for us in protecting our privacy is the massive incompetence and inefficiency of Leviathan. Such fecklessness can never be entrusted with protecting the private data of private citizens from intrusion by rogue gov't, or hackers. Heck, they can't even protect their employees' data. I'll be hanged if I want to trust them with protecting mine.

Solaris wrote:

treadlightly wrote: As a result, US-based encryption will always have a shadow of distrust, and I wonder how long it will take bad guys to apply a little meta-encryption.

To this day I am not sure what happened to TrueCrypt, but the above statement is true. If Apple loses, the entire US crypto industry cannot be trusted.

And we used to be the very best at it...back when. How ironic that the government of a "free-market" constitutional republic is willing to kill off that which we used to be good at in order to exert more power and further subvert the constitution upon which it is founded.

To me, it reinforces the idea that it is the nature of government.....ANY kind of gov't....to always try to grow its control over the governed. It is an insatiable beast, and Leviathan is the perfect name for it.

talltex wrote:I'm definitely against the government forcing Apple, or any other company< to provide them means to invade the privacy of U.S. citizens. I believe doing so is a violation of the 4th Amendment's protection clause. Read the forward thinking opinion of former SCOTUS Justice Louis Brandeis concerning wiretapping in 1928 and his comments concerning future possibilities that might occur.He was dead on the money.


"The progress of science with furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be able to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Time and again this court, in giving effect to the principle underlying the 4th Amendment, has refused to place an unduly literal construction upon it...the protection guaranteed by the amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, against the Government, the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the 4th Amendment."

We REALLY need a "Like" button!

ScottDLS wrote:If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use strong encryption...

OK, I am SO going to steal that!

rtschl wrote:Apple is wrong per Donald Trump....

Oh, then it must be settled law then........

One Shot wrote:Interesting additional details.
Comments worth reading too.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/02/ ... pple-says-

VERY interesting. Gov't's case against Apple kind of falls apart.

Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Bitter Clinger wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

WildBill wrote:

android wrote:
As long as your drawbridge was not owned by the city you lived in and used during the committment of capital murder by terrorists who are NOT ISIS affiliated, you seem to have a clear cut infallible argument.

Just to be clear.....you require that TWO conditions be met: (1) not municipally owned (in my example it is privately owned on my land), and (2) not used during the commitment of terrorist murder. I rather suspect that you meant "OR" instead of "and". Since my example excluded municipal ownership, the clear implication is that I no longer own the rights to my own property if someone else beyond my control misuses it for terrorist purposes. According to that position, if I have some tenuous connection of which I may not even be aware (coworker of, distantly related to, attended the same mosque/church at some point, college roommates with, 3rd cousin of a friend, etc.) with a person who turns out to be an ISIS terrorist, and that ISIS terrorist uses my drawbridge once to sneak across my property uninvited in order to climb over another the back fence of and link up with another ISIS terrorist who turns out to be a co-conspirator, and the two of them commit an act of terrorism in which people are killed. I no longer own my drawbridge.....the government does?

I'm not the terrorist. My terms of use (must be invited across...i.e. "licensed... for lawful purposes) of my drawbridge were clearly violated. I committed no crime. But since my drawbridge was used unlawfully by one terrorist to connect with another terrorist for the purpose of committing capital murder. ........I no longer own my drawbridge.

Jefferson is spinning in his grave.

OK, the bridge thing has me spinning, i think I may be the terrorist now

Let's try this to bring it back to your favorite technology vendor Apple:

Two hypotheticals -

1.0 Tim Cook is scared that ISIS will initiate reprisals upon Apple worldwide if he is seen to cooperate with the FBI and he is less scared of violating the court order. But he does have the technological solution.

2.0 Tim Cook has the technological solution and has already assisted the FBI in retrieving the data. This whole thing is a smokescreen designed to not let ISIS know that they are about to join the 72 virgins travel club (with a nod to Andy).

Like it? I do. If you do, let's try to solve the mystery of Flight 370.

I like it, but I'm not sure Flight 370 can be solved.....

1.0 doesn't sound that plausible to me. 2.0 sounds plausible, but who knows? There's always 3.0..... Tim Cook is actually telling the truth, and we're back to square one.