Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Sides With FBI In Apple Spat (ft.com)
Fudge Factor 3000 writes: Bill Gates has now publicly stated that Apple should cooperate with the FBI in the San Bernadino terrorist's phone unlocking case. He states that it is for this specific case, but seems to miss the point that there are other law enforcement officials waiting on the wings with their requests should this precedent be set. The war against privacy escalates. Setting aside the actual practicality of unlocking the San Bernadino phone, the teams that are emerging on this issue include some pretty strange bedfellows: John McAfee and Bill Gates on the pro-unlocking side, and Woz, Edward Snowden and even some of the victim's families on the con.
Not that his opinion matters nearly as much as the others(he's still loaded; but he's more busy playing the Hunter S. Thompson of tech than being a tech leader these days); but I thought that McAfee's position wasn't so much 'pro unlock' as "Me and my hacker posse will hack the shit out of it!"; which is a vote in favor of getting the contents of the phone(not that anyone is really against that, if there were some non-problematic way to do it); but not obviously a vote in favor of the feds having the right to force Apple to make it so.
Bill Gates is a guy who won't blink for a second when it comes to sending a human rights activists in China 10 years of hellish prison. He'll do ANYTHING to get in good with the government to make money. He's not even very particular about which government he'll hop into bed with. What do you expect him to say about a Muslim murderer who killed Americans?
Funny you say that, because I remember back when Apple started down the path of selling glorified spyware, Microsoft (for all its faults) was actually considered one of the "good guys" with regard to privacy. "They may be greedy, cheating bastards, but at least they have the decency to respect our privacy" was the common talk -- right here on slashdot!
Imagine that. Not easy, is it?
If Apple has done it's job correctly and provided the feature that it has advertised, it should not be possible for them or anyone else to decrypt the phone.
Apple's response should be; 'Not possible. Prove us wrong.'
That Apple has chosen to argue privacy and morality rather than stating not technically possible suggests to me that it is possible and they have failed to deliver what they advertised.
You don't think China doesn't already have the capacity? Something tells me that they fully understand how to do this. Remember they BUILD these things nearly exclusively and can easily obtain or reverse engineer these devices sufficiently to do anything they want.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I am more surprised that he does not realize you cannot create a specific solution for this that is not also a general solution for all phones.
Err, can't you? Since only Apple has the private key necessary to sign iOS firmware updates, AFAICT that means that Apple could release a nerfed firmware that would run only on an iPhone 5c with Sayed Farouk's phone's hardware ID, and refuse to run on any other device, and nobody would be able to modify it without breaking its signature.
I understand there is also a principle of legal precedent to consider, but from a technical standpoint I don't see how it's impossible.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.