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FBI Unlocks iPhone Without Apple's Help In San Bernadino Case (recode.net)
New submitter A_Mang writes: After asking for a delay last week, today the FBI revealed that a third party has succeeded in unlocking the iPhone used by a shooter in the San Bernadino attack. They've asked the court to vacate their request for an injunction forcing Apple to provide tools for unlocking the phone.
"The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook's iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple Inc. mandated by Court's Order," the filing reads. The report doesn't elaborate on how they've gained access, nor does it reveal any of the information stored on the phone. What we do know is that last week the FBI contracted Israeli software provider, Cellebrite, to help break into the phone.
What am I supposed to be skeptical of?
Their statement that they broke the phone and don't need the court order anymore? Why would they bother lying about that?
Apple claimed that it wanted to defend the privacy of its customers. Great.
Then they extended that principle to defending the privacy of a known terrorist, who is dead, and who consented to having his activities monitored (because the phone was owned by his employer, the County of San Bernardino). In this case, the county government was Apple's customer, and Apple was going against the wishes of its customer by protecting the privacy of the county's most nightmare employee. That's a PR debacle.
And if the FBI is telling the truth about having cracked the phone, the vaunted privacy that Cook pledged to defend is rather diminished. (Most customers will never give any thought to technical details, like the 5C lacking the security chip that later models have.) That's the second PR debacle.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Odds are they never cared about that anyway, but only about setting the precedent by requiring Apple to help them,
I know it's never been a popular view on Slashdot, but perhaps if we all just loosen our tinfoil hats a bit, we can see Ockham's favored solution.
I see an investigative team who did their research, and realized that the only thing standing between them and potential evidence was a stupid passcode on the phone. They knew there was an attack vector there, because later models added hardware security. All they needed was for Apple to sign a tool to work around the lock. That meant asking for a court order, because there is no alternative. Now someone else has come forward with an alternative, and the team is still open to it. It seems to work, so the request for Apple's help can be dropped.
That scenario requires me to believe that the FBI has assigned their qualified personnel to a high-profile case. It also requires me to believe that the FBI's personnel are doing their sworn duty to seek legal justice. In short, it requires me to only believe that people are individually doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
The conspiracy theory means there is a team at the FBI seeking to undermine American freedoms, and that they operate with high enough authority and wide enough acceptance that they can interfere with any convenient case and effectively obstruct justice for a few months while they submit a bogus court motion that may or may not be granted, and if so, may or may not set a useful precedent.
For that scenario, I am expected to believe in a cabal of high-ranking FBI officials who are all individually working utterly contrary to their sworn duty, with no oversight, and that none of them (or any subordinates who know of them) have ever had the moral fortitude to say "this is wrong".
Sorry, folks, but this is reality, not the X-files. There are no like-minded high-ranking alien conspiracies in the government. There are only people, doing their best to do what is right.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.