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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.
I understand that the government can issue a warrant, completely in the spirit of the 4th amendment. However, how can they "deputize" or force independent individuals/organizations to do their bidding?
This whole charade smells of the government abusing this one request to make precedent for future requests.
They have somebody on the inside to mess with it? Chain of custody for evidence in major federal incidents is usually watertight specifically to avoid this kind of thing.
or just a asshat nutcase? He targeted a place he worked. Back in my day we just called this "Going Postal" and acknowledged that whatever flimsy excuse the shooter used was largely irrelevant. I don't know, but I do hate seeing crap like this scaring the hell out of Americans and making them willing to chunk freedom and demands for better living/working conditions out the door if only someone will please protect us from these terrorists...
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A known way around the encryption, if you backup to iCloud, is to reset the password on the iCloud account and restore the iCloud backup to a new device.
Might I suggest Enhanced interrogation for the entire health department, I hear it is still legal.
So apple can show that the iPhone was tampered with after the government took possession. Well that makes the information on the phone totally suspect.
That to me shows there is no reason to decrypt the phone as nothing on it can be trusted to be authentic any more.
For example, highly paranoid version,
Did the CIA get someone to re-image the phone and plant false information.
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.
does that mean they would have complied with government request, if it was easy to do as in previous cases?
as i said , apple should clearly articulate the principles on which it is basing its policy, instead of deciding case by case ( based on what seems to be variety of other factors )
This phone belonged to the place where this guy worked. So when he murdered a bunch of people, I am sure HR started a process to terminate his network access and revoke his use of things like this phone, in part by changing the passwords.
He may have died in a shower of bullets but god damn it Sally in HR was gonna cross every T and dot every i on that termination form!
Sig for hire.
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!
That's all they are asking for.
They didn't ASK for it, however, they had an unlawful order issued for it.
Apple could have helped them, perhaps, if they asked for it, but Apple has a civic duty to fight the unlawful order, lest it become a precedent for further abuses.
http://www.politico.com/f/?id=...
DOJ filing, page 18, footnote 7.
(credit: https://twitter.com/grimmelm/s... on twitter)
If the US govt can force them to do it, the Chinese govt can force them to do it. And so on.
On iOS your employer can put a certificate on your device that allows them to get into the device they loan you.
Too bad they didn't do it, HR could have gotten the FBI in.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"Ownership" is the right to say "No." If Apple can't say no to writing a new way to access their own devices, then they don't own Apple. The FBI is not asking for access. They are asking for a service to be performed.... and not by any one individual... by a company. Last I heard, there is no enlistment right for corporations (yeah, yeah, despite corporate personhood). You can buy something, you can lend something. But if you can't tell someone "no" when they request your services, they own you. And FBI does not own Apple. They are not asking for something which already exists. They asking for work to be performed at their behest. This case is becoming about more than the right to privacy. It's becoming about the right to not be deputized at a judge's pen stroke. If Apple can be compelled to write code because FBI so chooses, then anyone can.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
And just adding fuel to the fire. Real terrorist have an agenda. They're trying to accomplish something. Asshat nutcases are either mentally ill or financially desperate.
There's two distinct classes there. You can't do much about the mentally ill except watch out for them and give them what help our science has. For the destitute you can stop oppressing them. We do horrible, horrible things to people in the middle east. We do worse to folks in South America. These people don't hate our freedom, they hate what we've done to them. Isis aren't terrorists. They're a bunch of men with no jobs and no wives. I suspect the shooter in San Bernadino was severely mentally ill.
Given a chance most people will choose honesty if their brain chemistry allows it. That's why the Mob eventually got busted. Rather than rail on against them as criminals start asking why they turned to crime in the first place. Start getting at root causes and the real social distortions that take what started out as a young boy and turn him into a killer ready to throw it all away.
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I don't think you've got the issue here quite right. There's a couple reasons to believe that the 4th Amendment is not applicable in this case. The user of the phone is dead, so a lot of his privacy and autonomy interests are nullified now. He has no papers or effects that belong to him because he's a legal non-person. At best you could argue a chilling effect for other iPhone users -- and that's a pretty good argument. But thing this wasn't even his phone, it belonged to his employer. So while I think the 4th should be applied to phones owned or leased by living users, if the employer has no objection to the government searching the phone I don't see how the 4th applies in this case.
I've heard two serious issues actually raised, namely (1) that what the government is asking Apple to do is bad for the privacy of Apple's customers and (2) that the government has overstepped its authority in what it can compel Apple to do. This isn't a case of Apple sharing documents it has access to with the government, in fact Apple has already done that; the government is in effect asking Apple to develop a new tool that will give it easy access to any iPhone, any time, not just this one.
Aside from the fact that if Apple did it's job well (what are the chances?) developing this tool should be non-trivial, in absence of some kind of established oversight mechanism for using such toolsk the public shouldn't be too keen on letting the government have them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They do articulate their policies regarding warrants and other such requests on their privacy policy pages. This goes beyond a warrant for data, however. This is a writ compelling them to build a malicious version of their own OS that is designed to compromise the system's own security. That's a far cry from delivering data you already have on hand, and Apple already pushes back on quite a few of those, based on the stats they publish.
iCloud password != phone passcode. That's like changing your email password and expecting your ATM card PIN number to change too.
Simple, F*ck the FBI and bullshit like this.
So there are 4 security flaws in the "encrypted" iCloud backups?
Is there any reason why Apple can't at least change the guys password? Then restore the backup to a new iPhone using the same account?
No need. Apple has handed over the complete backup to the FBI. But it is an _old_ backup.
If someone hadn't changed the iCloud password, the locked phone could be convinced to perform a backup. That's what iPhones do all the time; they perform backups while you are not using the phone. And then Apple could have easily delivered that backup with the latest data to the FBI.
br. But because the iCloud password was changed, the phone doesn't know the correct iCloud password and can't back up. And because you can't unlock the phone, you can't set the correct password.
I'm really interested in your statement that "code is speech" and therefore protected by the First Amendment. Are you able to cite any supporting materials on that please? The reason being that if, in the eyes of the law, software really is equivalent to speech, then I doubt that it can be patented. Successfully proving your claim could have massive impact, for example, for all those who have signed patent licensing deals with Microsoft...
So how come they do not just accept what ever the hell iCloud password comes from the phone as the correct password, so that it can do the backup. You have the phone, you can create a sealed room with the phone in it, so it can talk to your pretend tower and communicate with the pretend iCloud and have it's password accepted and you are done.
All they can ask for is the build details, which Apple should supply and from there on in, it is the FBIs problem to solve.
Reality is when any technological device is taken for evidence, it should never ever be powered up again. The storage memory should be accessed directly by opening up the device and make a copy directly from the storage hardware (the inputs and outputs are known, the power connection is known, a direct copy is the only thing that should be allowed and only the copy is touched).
The defence can then demand in court that a fresh copy be made under defence observation and that copy be compared to the copy being used in court by the prosecutors. Then of course is the whole argument of, prove that the device was not hacked and that some one else just planted the evidence for what ever reason. Revenge, promotion, extortion, to hide their own activity etc..
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen