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Google CEO Finally Chimes In On FBI Encryption Case, Says He Agrees With Apple (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: After Tim Cook's eloquent letter explaining why Apple wouldn't help the FBI get encrypted data from the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, the internet looked to Google to take a similar stand. Now Google CEO Sundar Pichai has posted five tweets that seem to show he agrees with Cook.
Edward Snowden had previously suggested that Google's silence meant Google had "picked a side, but it's not the public's."
Edward Snowden had previously suggested that Google's silence meant Google had "picked a side, but it's not the public's."
I'm glad Sundar is agreeing this is an important issue... however, there are a lot of wiggle words in his phrasing.
Is it too much to ask Google to simply come out in favor of privacy of its users?
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Google copies Apple, what a surprise :-)
That doesn't mean the content that's captured is unencrypted... iMessage, etc...
No sig for you! Come back one year!
This announcement, while still unofficial as a company policy, is moving the conversation in the right direction, but if the government wants to do something, they'll do it... I can see all cockamamie reasons, such as 'aiding and abetting criminal activity.'
I'd be the first to get a Blackphone (maybe roll-your-own-Android, if possible) if Apple caves-in regarding government-mandated backdoors. Personally, I just don't see how removing encryption from public-use would ever work. If there's ever a case where I'd rather sacrifice some convenience for security, this is it... even if it means giving up smartphones.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
It's a question of honoring privacy rights in general, not a specific person's
Google already cooperates with the FBI. When gmail's targeted advertising scanning system detects terroristic keywords in your email it displays an ad from the FBI.
Well if we're stooping to cliché level arguments... wrong + wrong right . If we were to follow your line of reasoning to its end, one could argue that torture is completely justified as well.
Funny after helping with PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... all the big brands are now out in public rediscovering the 4th Amendment.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Well if we're stooping to cliche level arguments... wrong + wrong != right . If we were to follow your line of reasoning to its end, one could argue that torture is completely justified as well." That's closer to what I meant to type... apparently greater than and less than signs don't work well and the accented 'e' turns into some funky combo of characters...
True but this case related to iOS 8. Previous iOS versions were not as secure
I get that you're trolling, but I just came in from walking the dog and was listening to some Right Wing talk radio in between periods of the Blackhawks-Rangers game. All the Right-Wing jackoffs are going on about how Tim Cook should be jailed for contempt or treason or something or other and how a corporation giving up encryption keys and backdoors is the same as if the local cops come to your door with a warrant and we should trust the NSA and FBI and all the three-letter agencies to make sure it's only the information on one phone that is decrypted.
It just shows they don't mean a bit of it when they say how they hate Big Government. They just want Big Government on their own terms.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, that's such happy horseshit. The government already has all the evidence they need in this San Bernadino case. They're trying to get their hands on a technology and set a precedent. Fuck them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hey whipslash, on a side note...
I agree with you here, but even if I didn't - I'd like to say I find it refreshing that you're taking the time to participate in the discussions here on Slashdot. It shows that you're invested in this site in more ways than just financially, and I appreciate it!
#DeleteChrome
So, Apple proudly stands up to the US government, while bending over and submitting to special audits from China. It's like Hollywood and how they would never, ever censor their true artistic vision - except in China where they happily cut out the hero's heartfelt speech about how people should be free. It's like some kind of cuckold fetish where American companies feel great pleasure to submitting to violation. And yet, at home, they maintain the facade with angry denials and "we love freedom" speeches.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
FTFA
Does this mean that we own our iphones and that it is ours to hack and mod as we see fit?
You're up.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Want to see smoke come out of someone's ears? Ask one of the Tim-Cook-is-a-traitor, we-can-trust-the-government crowd why the FBI shouldn't break into the gun store owner's phone, where the San Bernardino shooters bought some of their firearms and brass, just to make sure nothing hinky is going on with him or his shop. You can watch the disconnect happen in their brain. "BUT THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO RIGHT..." Exactly! "AND IT WOULDN'T HELP THE CASE..." Exactly!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
After I wrote that I wondered: do the Majority now need protection from the Minority when the minority gets majorly disgruntled??? I don't think it is possible politically or technologically. But hypothetically if it were: What would you sacrifice for society's security? Real time tracking of all individuals? The bill of rights? Free speech? the ability to defend oneself? Outlawing cash? Outlawing any transaction or communication that government can't record and track? Outlawing disagreement? Outlawing gene therapy which can be used for both good and evil? The government pretends to guarantee some level of civility, which they cannot. They can't even talk about balancing their budgets, so I think morality has gone out the window a long time ago. The real point is that like any technology individuals with encryption can do evil. But they can ALSO use it for good. Modern banking relies on it. Political activists rely on it. The blockchain, for example has ability to make individuals more powerful in a good way. Perhaps individual voting will allow our government to retire and move onto a post-democracy without dictators?? You are right things need to change, but recognize encryption is an important aspect of positive change. too.
this one case is a bit more tricky, since the fbi can reasonably say that apple can do what they want and it's not even that expensive. anyone with apples toolset and more importantly the signing key can do what fbi is requesting. fundamentally it's not even about 'creating' such a tool and that it would open a can of worms. it wouldn't. if something that could be created in half a day by altering a few lines would be a can of worms then it would already be a can of worms. on iphone 5C. those few lines would be the line where is the check for ten tries and the amount of delay introduced between tries. that would be enough to brute force it with a robot finger. another few hours would have the sw just brute force through all combinations on the phone itself - at just a rate of 1 per second it would be just few hours and since you can query the cpu/soc multiple times per second if the given pin is correct then if it's a 4 number pin it would take only something along the lines of half an hour, 5 number one would be still under half a day and six not too much long either. the part on the cpu on 5C that coughs up the code does not have extra protections or limits or any of that fancy stuff that 5S would do.
because it's an iphone 5C and apple _CAN_ write firmware for it and load it on the phone to brute force the correct pin on the cpu to make the cpu cough up the encryption key this is not quite how apple spins it up. but apple doesn't want to admit(nor is it denying) that it can write the requested software - it's trying to argue that it doesn't have to, I guess in order to fight off further requests to modify firmwares that actually are delivered to consumer phones, which would need backdoors installed before hand.
on iphone 5S and onwards it would not be possible. but try explaining this to a normal journalist. if apple opens it, they think that iphones all can be opened in same way - and apple has been publicly saying that they can't open them, (which is true for newer iphones than the 5C). suppose they do open it for them? what then? lawsuits from 5C owners who could arguably argue that they were mislead with marketing about the capabilities of their phone.
so, on 5C the encryption key is on the cpu and can be queried multiple times per second with the right firmware and the right firmware can be loaded on boot from usb if you have apples signing keys(or if you can break the bootloader, I suppose). that is, on an iphone 5C the penalty wipe for guessing more than 10 times is performed in firmware loaded software and can be trivially circumvented if you have firmware source code and signing key. apple doesn't deny or admit this due to marketing and that it would confuse the hell out of people who don't understand the difference between 5c and 5s.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Thanks! I think some people aren't used to editors disagreeing with them so they take a little more umbrage than they should.
It's likely, at some point, I'll disagree with you on something - but I'll do my best not to take umbrage. :-D
If we were all in lockstep all the time, this would be a very boring place.
#DeleteChrome
And where are you, Larry and Sergei? Waiting for the unpleasantness to just go away? Shivering under the covers with the rest of your lot? Shame on you. It is nearly too late to call your side, and we are all waiting.
As I get older, I'm beginning to hate people who repeat these kinds of analogies more and more. It is simply not analogous. All of the hypothetical scenarios provided are nothing like asking Apple to produce an FBI-specific iOS capable of being brute-forced.
Apple probably helps law enforcement conduct reasonable searches all the time, but doing so in this case is more analogous to creating some kind of sci-fi time ripple that instantaneously retrofits (future-fits?) every single other person's home, past and future, to be constructed only of balsawood or whatever is easy enough for some knucklehead to brute his way through. Working with the law enforcement agencies in the past in decades past did not also simultaneously blast legislation through the Congress outlawing everyone in the future from having the same kind of housing, or safe, or hidey-hole where they kept their information that was too hard for the feds to get to. That is essentially what the FBI is asking Apple to do here.
Not only that, but the government has shown that they have no real limit as to what they will ask for. This encryption is too difficult and prevents the FBI from doing their jobs, and why shouldn't they be able to do their jobs when they can just read all of Syed Fuckhead's text messages thanks to the NSA, anyway? Well guess what retards, Apple might never have started default-encrypting everything if it hadn't been made painfully aware to everyone in the world that the NSA was illegally snooping on all of your messages in the first place. The encryption arms race is spearheaded by the NSA, and the FBI should forward all of their crybaby memos to them instead of thanking them for being given the ill-gotten gains from their massive surveillance programs.
That's also completely ignoring the fact that it might not even be possible for Apple to do what they want done, since it's not clear that Apple could update the OS as requested on an already locked device.
You realize that this is one issue where nearly all the Republican and Democrat politicians agree?
Biased much against Google?
Cook posted a letter yesterday, Pichai responded today. OH MY GOOD HOW COULD IT TAKE SO LONG!?
The killers are already dead. This is a fishing expedition to find accomplices.
This is my last post here
Awww, and it's not even my birthday
If someone in my family gets hurt, I will want vengeance and retribution. I want the guilty to suffer. Death is too kind, I want to see prolonged torture, and I want to take part in it myself.
Which is why the laws are the way they are. People who are hurt generally want vengeance, not justice. That doesn't mean that it's right to give them that, or that giving them that will make society better. In fact, it will make society worse.
Just like in this case.
Do you think would-be terrorists put entries on their calendar to remind themselves of the time and place of an attack? The cell-service provider can provide records about how the phone was used for communication.
If he was a *known* terrorist, why wasn't he arrested and charged with a crime prior to this attack? Why wasn't he under surveillance? He's now dead, so he can't be "aided" by anyone.
Your *assumption* is ridiculous. The government could not possibly know that a phone contains the type of information that could thwart an attack. The NSA has even been forced to admit that the gargantuan amount of data they have amassed through their illegal spying operation has failed to prevent one single terrorist incident.
Of course not, but since the Republicans on the Right are crowing about how they're the party of "small government", the hypocrisy is especially galling with them.
If someone comes out and says that they want bigger government, and mean it, I can deal with that and make an informed decision. If someone comes out and claims to want to have government small enough to drown in a bathtub and at the same time approves of ubiquitous surveillance, infinite military spending, militarized police departments, laws covering women's reproductive organs, the death penalty and the prison-industrial complex, then they're not only complicit in evil but they're bullshitting about it.
Now, have we cleared that up?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sorry, no. Everything sent to Apple is encrypted. The iCloud backup is encrypted. I'm too lazy to Google for the multiple, multiple references to this, but here's one.
I don't really give a shit if you use APK's program or not. Go ahead and download it. We are just trying to stem the commercial spam he spews all over the place.
The FBI isn't asking for a new backdoor, they are asking to use one that Apple already created inadvertently. Call it a design flaw, but this older model phone has a flaw that allows Apple to send it a signed software update that will disable the limit on password tries.
And if it is a 4 digit numeric pin that means only 10k possible combinations. Basically someone trying every combination manually could probably crack it in a few days assuming Apple can also update the firmware so that it can check the password without delay.
I agree that Apple should be able to design and sell phones without back doors and that they should not be compelled to provide back doors to the government. But they are the ones that got themselves into this with a poor security design on this older phone.
On the newer phones apparently this is apparently not an issue since the chip that stores the encryption keys is what enforces the password try limit.
This case isn't about privacy. I don't think anyone with any knowledge of the law and legal precedent would seriously dispute the government's right to search the phone of someone who has carried out a terrorist attack.
What this case is about what a third party can reasonably be ordered to do (without compensation?) to facilitate a legal search. This goes well beyond a landlord being ordered to unlock a back door. Or even allowing a wire tap to be installed on a phone line. My guess would be that assisting the FBI would probably take a few days and potentially disrupt Apple's iOS QA cycle for that long if they have to utilize in house resources.
Maybe longer since they essentially have to fork the iOS code base for this one device and then somehow isolate and target this one device for a software update. Oh and really trying hard not to brick the phone in the process. Not trivial, but certainly a somewhat borderline case considering the relatively vast resources of Apple.
And being ordered to turn over their iOS signing certificate and iOS source code so the FBI can do it themselves should be way way off the table.
Just wanted to chime in with an additional "thank you", not only for dealing with APK (at least partially...*cue response from APK*), but also for tackling a lot of the other low-hanging fruit that's been bothering the community for awhile. Not to mention the fact that you're doing it carefully. It'd be easy to swing the banhammer or eliminate the ability to post as AC, but you clearly understand the community and why neither of those would work. And it'd be easy to try revamping everything before earning our trust, but you're starting with the thousand cuts we've been suffering from for years, even though fixing them isn't flashy or exciting (e.g. APK, better editing, less links to paywalled sites, less dupes, etc.).
I suspect it's mostly a thankless slog to get through those issues and earn our trust, and it'll doubtless be quite awhile before we're ready to accept bigger changes, but I'm already genuinely looking forward to what's ahead. Again, thank you.