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Police Unlikely To Win Wider Access To Smartphones Despite FBI Success In San Bernardino Case (latimes.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the there's-always-next-time dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: The successful hack of a phone linked to the San Bernardino terror attacks is unlikely to help police win greater access to encrypted data contained inside thousands of smartphones sitting in evidence lockers nationwide, legal experts and law enforcement officials said Tuesday. The process used to gain access to Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone 5c might not work on other devices, according to an FBI official with knowledge of the investigation. Though the FBI might want to use the new tool to help solve outstanding criminal cases, doing so would also make the process subject to discovery during criminal trials and place the information in the public domain, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity. "From all the chiefs that I've talked to, we're hopeful this will give us some insight into how we're going to be able to get into some of the phones sitting in all of our evidence rooms," said Terry Cunningham, police chief in Wellesley, Mass., and president of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police. "We're clearly anxious to learn what they did and how they did it and if it can be replicated."

5 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Unless used in warrantless surveillance by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Though the FBI might want to use the new tool to help solve outstanding criminal cases, doing so would also make the process subject to discovery during criminal trials

    Only if the use is admitted in court. They can use it in warrantless surveillance without a problem.

  2. What an insight! by bickerdyke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Though the FBI might want to use the new tool to help solve outstanding criminal cases, doing so would also make the process subject to discovery during criminal trials and place the information in the public domain

    Yes, if such a tool exists, details on this process eventually will become public.

    Which exactly was Apple's point.

    All. The. Time.

    --
    bickerdyke
    1. Re:What an insight! by shawn2772 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But make no mistake: the effectiveness of the security system that we're talking about, is decades behind what we're otherwise used to.

      Completely false. Desktop encryption is, in general, far, far inferior to what we have on mobile devices today, because the systems are wide open, which means that the only line of defense is the user's password. Pull the hard drive out, make a copy, and go to town brute forcing it. Done. A small subset of machines these days have a TPM and use it in their encryption, which is better but not hard to fake out. You just have to feed the right sequence of hashes to the device, and it'll do your bidding.

      No, mobile devices and mobile OSes are dramatically more secure than desktops and laptops. They use hardware-embedded keys in addition to the user password. When the hardware also enforces brute force rate limiting (as the newer Apple devices do), it's even better.

      The one small advantage that machines with full-sized keyboards have is that users are slightly more likely to choose a better password. But only slightly, and hardware performance plus the availability of dirt cheap supercomputing (AWS or GCE) has largely erased that advantage.

  3. Propaganda machine in full swing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow, two articles in one day claiming a victory in the case they withdrew. Seems the propaganda machine is in full swing.

  4. Re:Claimed Success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a one-time litigator in US district court, it is not perjury to lie to the court unless explicitly under oath. Though as an officer of the court it is unethical--possibly even contemptuous or an obstruction--to mislead or lie in a motion or other non-sworn court paper. In my experiences sanctions are few and far between for such behavior, however, despite my experience that the most prolific perjurers in court are the police and the attorneys.

    In general parties ask for dismissal of their claims all the time before adjudication in order to avoid a bad result. For example, I made a motion for summary judgment in a trade secret case in San Jose. The Plaintiff moved for dismissal with prejudice. Since it was immediately granted, I did not gain a District Court precedent.

      In this case the smearing and vilification of Apple is in fully swing. I suppose that it is punishment for not simply rolling over for LE demands.