This is why I will not own any Apple products!

[flintknapper]

I am 100% with Apple on this one.

There is simply too much at stake and too much potential for misuse if the method for breaking into the phone were to get out (and it will).

Besides, if the Gov't (particularly the FBI) is supposed to be protecting us....then they should be hiring and using the best and the brightest. Let them figure it out.

Not to mention, whatever they find on the phone is unlikely to be significant anyway. It didn't belong to the head of ISIS, just a couple of low-level terrorist hacks, who managed to pull off what could be done any day, with the use of NO phone at all.

There is more than ONE type of security at risk here. The security of MILLIONS of people who own and use apple products, vs. the unlikelihood of FBI finding anything significant on ONE phone used by a couple of terrorists that the FBI/Others couldn't stop anyway,(NOT owing to a lack of technology).

I'd trust the Gov't (on this issue) about as much as a porcupine with a 'Pet Me' sign.

[ScottDLS]

I am 100% with Apple on this one.

There is simply too much at stake and too much potential for misuse if the method for breaking into the phone were to get out (and it will).

Besides, if the Gov't (particularly the FBI) is supposed to be protecting us....then they should be hiring and using the best and the brightest. Let them figure it out.

Not to mention, whatever they find on the phone is unlikely to be significant anyway. It didn't belong to the head of ISIS, just a couple of low-level terrorist hacks, who managed to pull off what could be done any day, with the use of NO phone at all.

There is more than ONE type of security at risk here. The security of MILLIONS of people who own and use apple products, vs. the unlikelihood of FBI finding anything significant on ONE phone used by a couple of terrorists that the FBI/Others couldn't stop anyway,(NOT owing to a lack of technology).

I'd trust the Gov't (on this issue) about as much as a porcupine with a 'Pet Me' sign.

I'm with Flint on this one.

This is the Clinton Era "Clipper Chip" all over again. dot-gov wants to force Apple to defeat their own security, in essence programming a back door into it. If the government can't do it themselves, then it proves that properly designed OS without a back door is likely secure, and anything else is NOT.

What they are essentially doing is trying to order Apple/Google/Microsoft, et al. to NOT allow unbreakable encryption in their OS's. It's also a waste, because the mathematics is well known and as soon as the big companies cave, then someone else will offer a package. The only way around this would be to ban its use by private citizens, which is what they're really after.

If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use strong encryption... Of course, the bad guys will just keep using it while covering it with the "weak" encryption that the government allows, which can supposedly only be accessed with a warrant anyway.

Who is the government to force me to violate my own 4th and 5th amendment rights by storing my personal papers and effects in a way that makes it easy for them to access it?

It's a stupid idea and more overreach by an already too powerful government.

Now Tim Cook and Apple and Google and MS are all a bunch of leftist, elitist, do as I say not as I do, types. I will not go out of my way to invest with them, but I'll continue to buy their products that are useful to me. They can still shove their sodomite marriage, abortion supporting, global warmist, fantasies where the sun don't shine...but my not buying from them is just going to hurt me.

[The Annoyed Man]

Apple is wrong per Donald Trump....

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

[The Annoyed Man]

If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use strong encryption...

OK, I am SO going to steal that!

[WildBill]

If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use strong encryption...

OK, I am SO going to steal that!

I think the government position is to allow only them to have automatic decryption, while the rest of us must have semi-automatic.

[Breny414]

If strong encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use strong encryption...

OK, I am SO going to steal that!

I think the government position is to allow only them to have automatic decryption, while the rest of us must have semi-automatic.

Ha ha!
256 bit or 257 bit encryption... whatever it takes.

[talltex]

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."

[The Annoyed Man]

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!

[treadlightly]

Crypto and other sorts of computer companies get served secret National Security Letters, which are things called administrative subpoenas, issued without a judge, but subject (in recent years) to judicial review.

The letters include a gag order, making it a really nasty crime to reveal you've gotten demands via National Security Letters, so companies have taken a lesson from the Glomar Explorer, a putative oil research ship actually used to recover a lost Soviet sub.

When questioned about the Explorer's true nature, the CIA had a conundrum. Answer truthfully and wreck an amazing intel asset, or lie and commit a crime. The law didn't allow either.

So, the answers were given in the form or "I can neither confirm nor deny...."

Companies get around the NSL gag order by posting, in advance, a declaration they have received no such letter. If they get served, they pull down the announcement without comment. That's called a canary announcement - if the mine canary dies, you have problems, if the canary announcement dies, customers should be aware of possible government inquiry.

TrueCrypt, one of the most popular cross-platform disk encryption tools in days of yore, took a different approach. Although they were Linux-centric, they made an announcement that Bitlocker in Windows had made their product obsolete, and, besides, TrueCrypt may contain unfixed security issues and can't be trusted. The (somewhat shadowy) developers behind TrueCrypt dropped the project.

Here's that announcement - http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net.

I like security. The rumors TrueCrypt had a problem with an NSL sounded conceivable, and were later pretty much verified, so I switched to BestCrypt, offered by Jetico in Finland, outside at least some US influence (and where Linux was born). I wasn't the only one to bail out of TrueCrypt.

Software audits have since shown TrueCrypt didn't have a backdoor, but the NSL letter was real. Probably.

Encryption giant RSA, according to leaks from that dirtbag Snowden, engineered a back door into a random number generator in their software under pressure and payment from the NSA. These things actually happen and evil people can profit from security weaknesses. That would include evil people within and outside government, just as legitimate forces of justice can benefit.

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.

Diffie-Hellman key exchange allows two people to arrive at a common shared secret number. You use it every time you visit an https web page, buried in something called IKE, or Internet Key Exchange. The world is welcome to listen to every scrap of communication between two parties doing IKE, unencrypted.

In Diffie-Hellman, neither side gets to predict or determine what the eventual secret number will be, but I can see ways something similar could be used to transmit data. Here's the scrambled data, here's the keys we used, knock yourself out - and you get nothing. Maybe for insurance, keep a few thousand files of random numbers, encrypted, to establish that decrypting a file doesn't necessarily reveal information.

I've often thought it would be immoral fun to have Cosmo's job from that movie, Sneakers. Providing sneaky IT services to someone who would really pay and appreciate the effort, that would be great. Unfortunately, the best opportunities come from those with the most to hide, and that counts me out. I'll stay creatively poor without criminal entanglements, no matter how much they might pay.

But I bet I could do a bang-up job. I am not seeking such employment.

If Apple honors the FBI's request, their security will no longer be trusted by FBI targets. Sounds like time to repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits reverse engineering, and free the FBI or NSA to lawfully reverse engineer the iPhone. They don't need to be able to make calls, they just need a dump of the data. The NSA probably has ways to crack AES, which has been found to contain minor weaknesses.

[Smokey]

I think the canary approach is interesting could be easily subverted. All the govt needs to do is tell people not to take down their canary. I mean, if we're already secretly making people do stuff, that is just one more thing. Just because someone tells us the FBI has never been there does not mean it is true.

[Dave2]

Sounds like time to repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits reverse engineering, and free the FBI or NSA to lawfully reverse engineer the iPhone.

I would not be surprised if they already have, and are just using this as the explain to the public (probably including Apple) about how they got the information. Especially since San Bernardino County reset the password at the FBI's request, which prevented Apple from giving them the backups.

[TexasSully]

I don't see what the issue is? Apple is looking out for the privacy of its customers. If they create a backdoor into the OS then they open a can of worms that can't be put back in.

[Solaris]

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.

[The Annoyed Man]

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.

[bagman45]

SPOT ON TAM!!!, and YES, we DEFINITELY need a "LIKE" button!!!