Apple Tells US Judge It's 'Impossible' To Break Through Locks On New iPhones (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apple told a U.S. judge that accessing data stored on a locked iPhone would be "impossible" with devices using its latest operating system, but the company has the "technical ability" to help law enforcement unlock older phones. Apple's position was laid out in a brief filed late Monday, after a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York, sought its input as he weighed a U.S. Justice Department request to force the company to help authorities access a seized iPhone during an investigation. In court papers, Apple said that for the 90 percent of its devices running iOS 8 or higher, granting the Justice Department's request "would be impossible to perform" after it strengthened encryption methods.

Comments

Sounds like

[Chrisq]

Sounds like a challenge!

Re:Sounds like

[adamstew]

Every device that is capable of running iOS 8 is the iPhone 4S and greater...so pretty much 5 generations of devices. I doubt many people have a 5+ year old iPhone at this point. iPhone 4 and under account for 4% of the current iOS market share. (source: https://david-smith.org/iosver... )

I doubt that they are now using this as a gimmick to try and force people to upgrade to a new handset at this time.

That, Detective, is not the right question

[rmdingler]

Impossible or not, is it a private company's (or individual's) duty to engage in the evidence-gathering duties of law enforcement?

I'm not sure the judicial conviction of this one suspect is worth granting law enforcement the unfettered ability to deputize anyone, any time it's convenient.

Re:That, Detective, is not the right question

[gstoddart]

Because, apparently, it is now "un-American", or straight up illegal, for private companies to NOT be part of the spy apparatus.

So, either you accept the provisions of stuff like the PATRIOT Act which says every company is required to participate and keep it secret ... or you have to somehow get a court to overturn that (or have the lawmakers repeal it).

But, make no mistake about it, in the present situation, spying is a given, the requirement for corporations to help is real, and the expectation that making something you can't help them break into is just helping terrorists.

So, yes, this may not the be the right question. The problem is to whom are you supposed to ask the right question?

Because apparently most Americans now accept this crap as perfectly normal, and have fully embraced that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

The cope creep of national security and terrorism to common day to day crimes was inevitable. And now law enforcement expects to bypass any legal controls, and get what they wish because they want it.

Papers please, comrade. That particular cat has been out of the bag for a while.

Re:That, Detective, is not the right question

[Kjella]

you sucker. Do you have any evidence to support your position? Apple moves only to make money. The "apple ecosystem" and the efforts they make to prevent jailbreaking are proof positive that their only ethic is more profit. You've been trolled by dirty capitalists.

Of course. But if they want to sell to non-US users having encryption that actually protects privacy might be a plus. We care just as much if not more than Americans, particularly since we got fuck all legal recourse if the NSA decides that all my data belongs to them. Nobody expects Apple to be doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it's good business. And now that the cat is out of the bag, if the US tries to push an official government backdoor that's fine with me because it won't sell in the rest of the world. It only worked as long as it was a secret and now it's not.

Bad guys

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what encryption is for. Keeping data from the bad guys.