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Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter To Back Apple With Legal Filing In FBI Case (recode.net)
An anonymous reader writes: Google plans to follow Microsoft in throwing its legal support behind Apple in its increasingly contentious dispute with the federal government around the iPhone connected with the San Bernardino terror attacks, according to sources.
At a congressional hearing on Thursday, Microsoft's legal chief, Brad Smith, said that the company plans to file an amicus brief next week in support of Apple's resistance to helping the FBI hack the phone. Google will deliver its own supporting brief 'soon,' according to sources familiar with the company.
At a congressional hearing on Thursday, Microsoft's legal chief, Brad Smith, said that the company plans to file an amicus brief next week in support of Apple's resistance to helping the FBI hack the phone. Google will deliver its own supporting brief 'soon,' according to sources familiar with the company.
If it would only take a team of 5-10 Apple employees a couple weeks to break into that phone, it means the data on those phones is about as secure as some md5 strings stored in a database. In other words, not very secure.
Call me anything you want, I ain't gonna buy this 'corporations standing up for the common people' crap
I've been in this field since the 1970's and the way I look at it is more like the following ---
Big Bad Corporations, being part and parcel of the big brother, already have backdoors built into devices they sell to the public
From time to time big brother will stage dog and pony shows designed to sway public mindset
This time they use the Islamic Terrorist attack on Christmas Party in California as the backdrop, claiming that they need to 'crack some encryption' of an iPhone belonged to one of the Islamic Terrorists, in order to find 'terrorist information'
And to maximize the impact, big brother stages it out in the open - pitting FBI/CIA/NSA on one side and the big corporations on the other side
This whole thing is nothing but a farce -
Big brother already got the backdoor handed to them prior to the release of iPhone to the public ( else why the POTUS is not allowed to use iPhone as a communication device?? )
Their main aim is to sway public's mindset into believing that the iPhone (and all the other communication devices) they use are 'safe' from big brother's prying eyes, plus the additional benefit of fooling countries such as Russia / China / Iran into letting their own top level people using the same devices, so that NSA/CIA could more easily eavesdropping on them
Stop being fooled !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You have no idea what you are talking about. You are completely naive.
America is an oligarchy. It has been for a very long time. The government is merely the place where wealthy special interests come together to negotiate the laws they want (and they are negotiating with each other, never us).
There is an amazing dog-and-pony show that makes us feel like we have some say. But our voice is only as loud as the amount of money we can summon up to further a cause; which for most of us means none at all (we love to vote because that is free, but we hate to put our money where our mouth is and support political lobbies, so we are politically impoverished).
The corporations have all the power, and this conflict between them is just more visible than most.
Personally, my money is on the tech leaders. They have the clear upper hand in this case. Any victory against encryption will be temporary at best.
Re 'a nation wide campaign to encrypt all basic communications"
Considering most UK and US political leaders did not have any issues with VPN use or more https, thats going to be interesting.
The 5 eye nation's security services seem very happy for people to keep feeling secure using https and VPN's.
Any code thats a standard seems to be of no challenge to the US and UK once its consumer ready. The only magic is in keeping people trusting their US branded technology. Keep talking, texting, having gps on that phone with a sealed in power supply. The brand is so secure, just like before, during and after PRISM.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The court order asks apple to produce the compromised firmware, load it on the phone and then hand the phone to the fbi. From there the fbi will extract the firmware and use it on any other 5c or compatible they want to crack. And it will leak.
It Apple hacks up the passcode code they can also add code to limit the firmware to this one particular phone. Once digitally signed the FBI and black hats could no more make this work on a different phone than they could have hacked up the passcode code themselves. Apple's digital signature prevents any tampering at all. There need not be any threat to any other 5c.
The real problem is that if one judge in one case can compel Apple to provide such technical assistance then any judge in any case can also do so. The government's claim this is a one-time thing is bogus.
Oh oh looks like the industry is bushing back against the government. Looks like it's time to create another terrorist attack to make the industry look like they are the bad guys. I know what I'm suggesting here is purely conspiracy but I do believe there is more here than what meets the eye.
Make no mistake, they are lining up behind Apple on this because if they don't the FBI will come after them next. It could just as easily been an Android phone or a Microsoft phone or a Facebook account that the FBI wants to get its mitts on. And once that door is open it will never close again.
The FBI could have chose to negotiate with Apple about this privately but they chose to take it public. Why? As Rahm Emanuel famously once said "never let a crisis go to waste". The government is once again using the excuse of "terrorism" to take away individual freedoms and rights. This is not just about getting into one iPhone. This is about getting into ALL phones. It always starts like this and little by little our freedoms erode.
Even if the FBI gets past the lock screen all of the data on the phone is encrypted separately. It will be useless to them, assuming there is anything useful on there in the first place. We don't know that. The FBI doesn't know that. Nobody knows that. For all we know there is nothing but Angry Birds on that phone.
But let's just suppose that we give the FBI the benefit of the doubt and let them crack the phone. How is that going to make us any safer against terrorists? It's the same deal with the NSA. Heck, the TSA for that matter. Gigantic waste of fucking time. Maybe if these idiots would spend less time bickering with the CIA I might cut them some slack. But they can't because they are Federal drones, programmed to engage in political infighting, waste, fraud, and general dick-headery.
I used to do consulting work for the Feds. Every place I went was more or less the same. The managers were almost uniformly stone cold morons. Whose bosses were politicians that wouldn't know efficient business practice if it kicked them square in the nuts. I went in hoping to change things for the better. I left vowing never to return no matter how much they offered to pay me. It was a shock something akin to someone that gets their first hospital bill. You know it's going to be bad but you have no idea until you experience it for yourself.