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

Posted by Soulskill on from the for-sufficiently-possible-values-of-impossible dept.

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.

4 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds like a challenge!

  2. That, Detective, is not the right question by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:That, Detective, is not the right question by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Bad guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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