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Apple Court Testimony Reveals Why It Refuses To Unlock iPhones For Police (dailydot.com)
blottsie writes: Newly unsealed court transcripts from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York show that Apple now refuses to unlock iPhones for law enforcement, saying "In most cases now and in the future, the government’s requested order would be substantially burdensome, as it would be impossible to perform." “Right now Apple is aware that customer data is under siege from a variety of different directions. Never has the privacy and security of customer data been as important as it is now,” Apple lawyer Marc Zwillinger said at the hearing. “A hypothetical consumer could think if Apple is not in the business of accessing my data and if Apple has built a system to prevent itself from accessing my data, why is it continuing to comply with orders that don’t have a clear lawful basis in doing so?”
But then the lawyer goes on to image a hypothetical customer asking:.......How is it complying if it's supposed to be impossible to do so?
You are implying that the lawyers are making an illogical argument (of course, lawyers are always perfectly logical, right? um.....)
Imagine if the court case escalated and went to the supreme court, where the supreme court decided, "you must change your software to make this possible." That is the scenario the lawyers are trying to avoid.
The trick to understanding legal arguments is to remember they happen in context of the law, and are only vaguely related to reality.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Even if it is possible, there is the question of cost effectiveness. If it takes millions of CPU-hours to crack -- or, worse, days or weeks of some expert's time to take the cap off a chip, peer with an electron microscope, and poke with an electron beam -- then the nation-state will probably limit attacks to cases where they have exceptionally high expectations of return.
Or the police will break out the $5 wrenches and rubber hoses, which runs into its own set of problems.
One of the reasons Apple can do this is that its dependency on government contracts is very, very low. Cell carriers are pretty dependent on the Feds and have a lot of revenue/relationships at risk.
That's not saying what Apple is doing isn't great, it's that it's easier for Apple to do that because the cost of doing it is relatively low.
Why do you think there is a concerted effort in the mainstream press to smear their popularity and in the financial sector to tank their stock? It's not a coincidence that all you hear is doom and gloom about Apple all of a sudden. They aren't playing ball, so they're getting sunk. That's the way it works here in the new America, if you haven't been paying attention.
Via the communications lines from AT&T, Verizon, and the tier 3 providers. We've heard it. Microsoft, Apple, and Google had nothing to do with it and in fact all of them moved to encrypt all comms once they found out about it. Again you are FUDing.
"The last company that makes lethal injection drugs, decides to stop doing it. In fact Justice Alito referred to this in recent cases - guerrilla warfare by these companies. Right. So the last company that has been providing drugs for execution, says to the Government, we are no longer going to help you out when it is time to execute somebody in Terre Haute. Can -- are they thwarting a lawful death sentence by doing that, and can they therefore be compelled under the All Writs Act to re-import something that is held abroad or release something from existing stock or actually manufacture the drug anew?"