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Apple Is Said To Be Working On an iPhone Even It Can't Hack (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes with this story at the New York Times: Apple engineers have already begun developing new security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone using methods similar to those now at the center of a court fight in California, according to people close to the company and security experts. If Apple succeeds in upgrading its security — and experts say it almost surely will — the company would create a significant technical challenge for law enforcement agencies, even if the Obama administration wins its fight over access to data stored on an iPhone used by one of the killers in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., rampage. The F.B.I. would then have to find another way to defeat Apple security, setting up a new cycle of court fights and, yet again, more technical fixes by Apple.
I find it hilarious that security efforts are not being driven by the government but to protect people from the government.
If the lack of security--due to government mandated back doors--allows for state sponsored persecution of innocents, enemy state or NGO attacks, etc. where would you stand then? You do grasp the concept that a security vulnerability may be exploited by any actor, at any time, not solely the "right and just" United States government after receiving a lawfully obtained court warrant?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
In a perfect world maybe, but you're not considering the real world where few lives will be saved, but the vulnerability will be abused constantly.
Why does apple get headlines for doing what they should have done in the first place? Anything else is a broken, insecure device. If the vendor has a backdoor, it's not secure, whether they allow the government to access it or not.
Anne Frank had something to hide from the government
The security "war" is not longer about country versus country, but about "the people" versus the government.
I RTFA this time. It, like so many other other articles, missed the actual legitimate issues of the case. Every time you read an opinion that says Apple should "unlock the phone" or "decrypt the phone" misses the point that Apple must create software which doesn't exist. Whether Apple should do that or not is itself an interesting discussion, but the real issue here is whether government agencies should be able to force software companies to create hacking software, especially when the software company isn't accused of breaking any law in the case.
I don't have any issue with the idea that a government agency should be allowed to create hacking software. I wouldn't object if the NSA had required Apple to sign a software update created by the NSA for the purpose of hacking into the phone. In fact, I think that's what the government should do. However, I'm very troubled by the fact that most people are in favor of Apple being forced to unlock a phone when that's not what is really going on.
Compulsion of speech is an issue that has been supported in food labeling laws and denied in other cases. Creating software is fundamentally different than providing existing information. I believe creation of software is a form of speech, and I think the courts have upheld that viewpoint, so this case is really hinging on whether a judge under "All Writs Act" has the authority to force someone, not even someone accused of a crime, to create something new.
I think it is important in this discussion to understand how the software the government wants Apple to create would work. Apple updates happen automatically for phones which automatically connect to a known wifi access point. Those updates don't just get pulled from Apple though, the phone creates a code which is encrypted with Apple's public key, so that only Apple with it's private key can decrypt. The update is then provided to the phone, with the code provided by the phone re-encrypted so that only the phone can decrypt it, and only then is the update, signed with Apple's key, loaded into the phone.
If the government wanted to, they could require Apple to provide source code to their existing software and the government could modify it and either ask Apple to sign it or require Apple to provide its private key. However, by requiring Apple to create the hacking software, they're introducing an idea that software companies cannot refuse to create software when required by the government. Once someone does something for a government official, often that's taken as a reason that the government can require them to do it again. (See In re Boucher - case citation: No. 2:06-mj-91, 2009 WL 424718)
Apple had asked that the request be sealed, thus kept secret and not able to be used as precedent but the Department of Justice refused and thus made their request both public and able to be used as precedent. If they succeed in forcing Apple to create hacking software they get access to the information on this phone, but more importantly, the hundreds or thousands of phones they'd like to access are much more likely to be accessed by forcing Apple to repeat the process over and over. Apple doesn't want to be in the business of creating hacking software for the government. Much of law enforcement would consider this a victory, but I think the FBI is hoping to lose this case as a general might be willing to lose a battle, in order to win the bigger war. By losing the case, the FBI gains public support that they can use to pressure Congress to create laws forcing software companies to build in backdoors. Such a thing could be done securely, so that it wouldn't open the software to hackers. I have zero faith that Congress or software companies actually would do it in a secure way, but that's not the reason I am against the backdoor. Encryption is math and the math is known and freely available to anyone who searches for it. The ability to create securely encrypted software is something that can't be made to disappear, but it can be made illegal to do in the US. By d
So what? The Magna Carta was written 800 years ago, and we still value many of the principles it contains. Much of the beauty of the Constitution is how well engineered it is, and how much of its framework still works and applies today, including the 4th and 5th. The fact that the founders couldn't foresee our technology is irrelevant. What you don't seem to understand (most people, actually) is that the Bill of Rights doesn't grant people rights.
It states that these rights preexist, AND EXPLICITLY STATES THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO POWER TO INFRINGE UPON THEM.
Whether we are to be secure in papers in our houses, our strongboxes, or letters, or text messages is simply a game of semantics. These are all communications we intend to hold privately ... and therefore the government has no right to them.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.