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Why Are Apple's Competitors Staying Silent On the iPhone Unlocking Fight?
erier2003 writes: A court order forcing Apple to help the FBI access a terrorism suspect's iPhone has drawn responses from leading tech companies, newspaper editorial boards, and security experts. But one major faction is staying largely silent: the computer and smartphone manufacturers who compete with Apple for business and could be subject to similar orders in the future if the company loses its high-profile case. Silicon Valley software firms have universally backed Apple in its fight against the Justice Department, which won a ruling Tuesday from a California magistrate judge compelling Apple to design custom software to bypass security features on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. But Apple's hardware competitors are staying on the sidelines.
Newsweek: Google and Microsoft Back Apple on Encryption Battle With FBI
If you bothered to read any of the news articles, Apple currently doesn't have that capability. What the FBI is asking for is to update iOS on the phone with a custom version that removes the time delay between unsuccessful passcode attempts, the 10-try limit before wiping the phone, and a way to enter passcodes via the lightning connector rather than the keypad --- all of this so the FBI can brute-force unlock the phone.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Finally we have a debate on whether or whether not the state should have access to people's personal data. This is what snowden wanted, his goal is reached.
No, that's not what this is about at all. The government has a search warrant for this data. They have the right to get the data. Apple even handed over an iCloud backup based on a legal warrant. Apple has absolutely no problem with handing over data when the police comes with a valid search warrant.
What Apple refuses to do is to break the security of their phones that they sell to millions of honest, hardworking citizens, honest but lazy citizens, dishonest citizens, politicians, lawyers, army personnel and so on and so on and so on, by creating software that they don't have right now, to access data that they cannot access right now.
This is not about preventing the government from executing search warrants, it is about keeping customer data safe. Apple declares that your iCloud data is safe from hackers and criminals, even though Apple can access it, because all that data is under Apple's control and they don't let hackers and criminals near it. Apple also declars that your phone data is only safe if _nobody_, including Apple, can access that data, because your phone can get under total control of the hacker.
As a side effect, Apple can deliver data stored on iCloud if they get a search warrant, but they can't deliver data stored on your phone. If Apple could deliver the data on the phone without creating a risk to the security of everyone, they would.
None of them also make the OS, they're just the hardware guys.
False. The other guys make enough OS customisations that they are well and truly in control of features to this level. Take a look at features like Samsung Knox to see what kind of security bolt-ons these vendors put on top of the features already in existence on Android. Many of these vendors also attempt to lock down the boot loader to prevent unauthorised code from running in ways that isn't part of the standard Android feature set so they most definitely do make major security changes to the OS before loading them on devices.