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Apple: Terrorist's Apple ID Password Changed In Government Custody (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Apple ID password linked to the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists was changed less than 24 hours after the government took possession of the device, senior Apple executives said Friday. If that hadn't happened, Apple said, a backup of the information the government was seeking may have been accessible.
Had that password not been changed, the executives said, the government would not need to demand the company create a 'backdoor' to access the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who died in a shootout with law enforcement after a terror attack in California that killed 14 people. The Department of Justice filed a motion to compel the company to do that earlier Friday.
Had that password not been changed, the executives said, the government would not need to demand the company create a 'backdoor' to access the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who died in a shootout with law enforcement after a terror attack in California that killed 14 people. The Department of Justice filed a motion to compel the company to do that earlier Friday.
There were two shooters, and they had documented terrorism involvement prior to this, once the investigation traced back far enough.
Most people don't bring their wives with them to help with "random and impulsive" workplace shootings, or set up a bomb factory in their garage weeks / months ahead of time.
Asked why the company is pushing back so hard against this particular FBI request when it has assisted the agency in the past, Apple executives noted that the San Bernadino case is fundamentally different from others in which it was involved. Apple has never before been asked to build an entirely new version of its iOS operating system designed to disable iPhone security measures.
I suppose this is a futile effort here on Slashdot, but maybe perhaps reading the FBI's court brief might answer/allay some of the "smell" of the charade (way to murder a metaphor, m8)
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2716011/Apple-iPhone-Access-MOTION-to-COMPEL.txt
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2716011/Apple-iPhone-Access-MOTION-to-COMPEL.pdf
Moreover, contrary to Apple's recent public statement that the
assistance ordered by the Court “could be used over and over again,
on any number of devices” and that “[t]he government is asking Apple
to hack our own users," the Order is tailored for and limited to this
particular phone. And the Order will facilitate only the FBI's efforts to search the phone; it does not require Apple to conduct the search or access any content on the phone. Nor is compliance with
the Order a threat to other users of Apple products. Apple may
maintain custody of the software, destroy it after its purpose under
the Order has been served, refuse to disseminate it outside of Apple,
and make clear to the world that it does not apply to other devices
or users without lawful court orders. As such, compliance with the
Order presents no danger for any other phone and is not “the
equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions
of locks.”
The FBI arrested the guy that supplied the guns used in the shooting. He is currently charged with providing material support to terrorists, which means they need to find evidence that he provided the weapons with the intent to support this particular attack. Otherwise they probably only can push weapons-related charges.
As he was buddies with the owner of the iPhone, odds are all they evidence they want against this guy is on that phone.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
http://www.politico.com/f/?id=...
DOJ filing, page 18, footnote 7.
(credit: https://twitter.com/grimmelm/s... on twitter)
To put this in perspective, that change in password would make anything found on the phone inadmissible in any trial as it indicates the chain of custody was broken.
And you would fail the bar exam. The password change would allow the opposing side (presumably defense) to challenge the validity and source of whatever information was obtained, but it would still be admitted so that the court (judge and/or jury) can decide how much it should be trusted. Think about a person running from the cops who throws a bag during the chase, and after catching him, go back and find the bag. What they find in the bag is still admissible even though it was out of the suspect's and the police's custody for a period of time. Even if a passerby picked it up and took it, then the police later came and asked if he had it, and he gave it to them, it would still be admissible. The defense would try to argue it could have been tampered with, but would likely lose (barring some evidence of tampering or that the second person had a known grudge against the suspect).
which again leaves me wondering about the relevance of not being able to back it up to the cloud.
The idea was that they could bring the iPhone back into range of a WiFi network it already knows (e.g. the WiFi network at the terrorists' condo) and within a day or two it would do another automatic cloud backup.
Once that completed, Apple (and therefore the government) would have access to that backup, and therefore could try to break the backup's encryption via brute force without triggering the 10-attempt-failure auto-erase that is present on the phone.
However, since the password was changed, it seems that now the phone will be unable to initiate a backup without someone logging in to the phone first.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.