If Apple surrenders, Cook would have to assemble a new software team to carry out a government-mandated task.
Now imagine if no Apple employee agreed to join that team. What can the FBI do about it? Can it demand that Tim Cook fire any employee who declines to participate? If so, under what enumerated power?
A back-door is almost trivial to find, once you know that one is present.
America used to lead the world in science, but now, its legislators are trying to redefine the rules of mathematics, and outlaw the ones they can't redefine. A sad day indeed.
You're very keen to tell us what you can't see. Not at all keen to see what we've been plainly putting in front of you:
Exactly how is that even remotely like being required to testify in court?
If a search warrant is issued by a court, and Apple is able to furnish the demanded items, they should.
I'm sure there are enough Apple employees willing to do the work. Or consultants could be hired..
Apple doesn't need to "create a backdoor", they only have to extract texts from one phone. Apple should make a reasonable effort to comply with court orders.
rry out a government-mandated task.
FBI do about it? Can it demand that Tim Cook fire any employee who declines to participate? If so, under what enumerated power?
Apple has handed over everything they had on their servers from the phone
there is a difference between handing over stuff you have and being forced to create tools to do it
so basically the equivalent of the draft just for companies
but the only way to extract the texts is to create a backdoor
and if they create a back door from "just this one phone", every other LEA and regime around the world will ask for the same favor
-Lasse
I don't see a big difference, as long as the task is not horribly burdensome. A court-issued search warrant might require me to open a safe, or fly to a branch office to fetch something, or dig up a box in the back yard.
Any company has the right to tell employees what they are expected to do. And the employees have the right to quit if they don't want to do it.
No, they would have physical access to the phone, to jtag it or use a logic analyzer or equivalent. That's not a backdoor in the usual sense. It doesn't open other phones to the world.
I assume that physical access to the guts of the phone is required, and that, given physical access, it can be done. If it can't be done, they can just say so.
If a their encryption can be cracked without physical access, that would be a very interesting revelation.
They wouldn't have to publish the technique. And they should always comply with legal US court orders. Search warrants are a legal and historical fact. Encryption should not be a way to evade them.
carry out a government-mandated task.
he FBI do about it? Can it demand that Tim Cook fire any employee who decli nes to participate? If so, under what enumerated power?
eed
this is more like telling you to build a tool to open the safe you sold to your neighbor
I'm talking about the company being drafted
drafted or in prison is usually the only times the government can force you to work for them
The encryption is unbreakable
They want a firmware the doesn't limit or slow down the number of pin code tries and a way to update the firmware without being logged in
don't don't have to publish anything, once everyone knows they have it they will ask for it
That horse left the barn a long time ago
-Lasse
Set up a kiosk in Chennai near the engineering department at MIT. Offer good pay, a nice apartment, free car, free parking, twice annual trips home and a fellowship grant at a US graduate school of his/her choosing.
Then Obama can use the new authority to discover who is opposed to liberalism and global and send the FEMA box cars with shackles to strategic locations where the crack troops can load up the patriotic gun owners they have collected in pre-dawn helicopter raids who will be interned in re-education camps.
carry out a government-mandated task.
he FBI do about it? Can it demand that Tim Cook fire any employee who decli nes to participate? If so, under what enumerated power?
eed
Encryption is a mathematical technique. "Should" doesn't come into it.
If the encryption technique were powerful enough, then it would be uncracka ble, even by the people who designed it.
The spooks traditionally wanted every encryption scheme to have a back door so that they could crack it if they felt the need. Donald Davies was rude about this in conversation back in 1980, but I don't remember him making th e point explicitly in his book
which got published in 1984.
I don't see a big difference, as long as the task is not horribly burdensome. A court-issued search warrant might require me to open a safe, or fly to a branch office to fetch something, or dig up a box in the back yard.
Any company has the right to tell employees what they are expected to do. And the employees have the right to quit if they don't want to do it.
No, they would have physical access to the phone, to jtag it or use a logic analyzer or equivalent. That's not a backdoor in the usual sense. It doesn't open other phones to the world.
I assume that physical access to the guts of the phone is required, and that, given physical access, it can be done. If it can't be done, they can just say so.
If a their encryption can be cracked without physical access, that would be a very interesting revelation.
They wouldn't have to publish the technique. And they should always comply with legal US court orders. Search warrants are a legal and historical fact. Encryption should not be a way to evade them. ==============================================================================
The only way to do the job is to create a new version of firmware, cryptographically sign that firmware with Apple's secret key so the processor will accept it, and then they can try passwords until they get it. They don't know if the user turned on the "delete everything after ten wrong password tries" feature or not, so they need that removed, then they need the increasing delays before accepting the next password after a wrong one removed, and then they need a fast way to input test passwords. Bruce Schneier has a very good summary in his newsletter:
----- Regards, Carl Ijames
That is not what they have been ordered to do. They have been ordered to turn over a hacked version of the OS which will allow the possessor to guess the access code an unlimited number of times as well as allowing the codes to be entered much faster. This could then be used on any similar phone.
This is code that would have to be written.
I can be forced to show up in court, testify, provide documents. I can't see that this case is any different.
Cool. All Apple has to say is that they can't do it.
I guess Cook can risk being punished for contempt of court, or for obstruction of justice.
Unless Apple declares the crack to be impossible, any government can and will demand that they do it. Whether or not they have done it in the USA won't matter.
No, to preserve the chain of custody of evidence, I suspect the FBI will not allow Apple to ever even SEE the phone. They will require Apple to provide the tools to alter the phone to allow them to hack the passcode. Once the FBI has such a tool, they can apply it to any iphone (perhaps only of the same model).
I think this is what Apple is so upset about, and they may be being very careful about exactly what they say publicly, so they felt they could not describe the scenario in detail.
Jon
Yes, you can't see. I agree. Actually, you refuse to see as well as distort the facts.
Can the court compel you to perform analyses on your equipment you have no previously done? Can they compel you to design new equipment?
They have said they can't do it without undermining the security of their phones which would be a *huge* economic burden on them.
That's why they have lots of lawyers to argue the matter in court.
"Can"... maybe. "Will"... you can't predict the future. Apple is fighting this in court and no one knows which way this will roll. Heck, Lindsey Graham has changed his mind and now agrees with Apple having learned a few things about the matter which you seem to wish to ignore.
Granting the amount of self-advertising done around here by our resident right-wing nitwits, Obama wouldn't need to crack the encryption on any phone to find that out.
Who bother? The only way to remain a right-wing nitwit is to be terminally ineducatable. Sending them to re-education camps might get them off the streets, but the chances of actually educating any of them seem remarkably slim.
On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 00:45:18 -0800, Robert Baer Gave us:
It isn't you.
On Sat, 19 Mar 2016 00:45:18 -0800, Robert Baer Gave us:
Set your clock correctly, dumbshit.
Oh my gosh! Someone finally makes a clear statement as to what is really wanted without manufacturing scary BS. Why is it that there is only ONE sane person here?
The problem seems to be that the phone is a piece of evidence and thus could not be handed over to Apple for extraction, without invalidating the use of the user data found in that particular phone as evidence.
They chain of custody gets compromised anyway, since the phone contents can be (indeed will be) changed by the update. The updated software could also change the encrypted content once the correct PIN is found. It could also just make it appear that incriminating information is in the encrypted file system, even if it isn't.
Any competent defence attorney would highlight that possibility. Apple employees would have to be called to give evidence on the matter. A jury might still be left wondering (and hence having reasonable doubt).
Not that the above matters so much if the phone contents is to be used for intelligence purposes rather than as evidence in a prosecution.
Sylvia.
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required