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Bill Gates Sides With FBI In Apple Spat (ft.com)

Posted by timothy on from the c'mon-bill-you-were-doing-so-well dept.

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.

4 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. McAfee? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:McAfee? by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's a phone, a small, losable, stealable, breakable, device you normally store in your front pocket. If you're storing valuable information on your device and not backing it up anywhere else, you're doing it wrong.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  2. Re:The US is not the only country. by bobbied · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:And you are surprised? by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.