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Slashdot Asks: Should FBI Reveal to Apple How to Unlock Terrorist's iPhone? (latimes.com)
After reports that the FBI managed to unlock an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters without the help of Apple, Apple is now the one that needs the FBI's assistance. "The responsible thing for the government to do is privately disclose the vulnerability to Apple so they can continue hardening security on their devices," said Justin Olsson, product counsel at security software maker AVG Technologies. However, many experts in the field believe that the government isn't legally obligated to provide the information to Apple. As mentioned in Los Angeles Times, this creates a new ethical dilemma: Should tech companies be made aware of flaws in their products, or should law enforcement be able to deploy those bugs as crime-fighting tools?
They didn't hack the phone - they're just trying to save face by saying they don't need Apple's help anymore.
Obviously the FBI should keep quiet.
That way they can hack the phones of government officials with impunity.
Eastern District of Texas for the win!
0000
the FBI says to Apple: "we paid XYZ to do it". FBI off the hook, and XYZ company charges Apple $2B for the answer. profit!
Shouldn't Apple be chasing after them for circumventing the encryption and digital rights management system on the phone? Its what they do to people coming up with jailbreaks... why would this be diffrent?
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
It's expensive and specialised equipment and time consuming, to perform the steps the crackers performed. They had to mirror the NAND, or stream the drives contents and crack the encrypt key. It's not unknown science, its just laborious and takes an expert. Apple knows how to do it.
If the FBI does not reveal the hack so they can hack other phones, well that means the bad guys can also continue using that hack. After all we know that there are now at least 3 organizations who can access a locked iPhone 5c without the owner's password.
...or should law enforcement be able to deploy those bugs as crime-fighting tools?
Um, no, law enforcement doesn't get to skirt around due-process just because it's inconvenient.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Just file a Freedom of Information Act request.
Our tax dollars paid for this hack.
Apple probably already knows, or could know in a day or less, and in either case the next version of the iPhone will probably be made immune to it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Surely for $15000 Apple could just go to the people that did the work for the FBI and get them to demonstrate it. Probably cheaper than the lawyer fees it would take to send a letter to the FBI.
O wait....we have already bent over. It is too late folks. No one cares what you think anymore. The system is established. Only blood will wash it away. Enjoy.
This should be a good test if the Apple argument holds water, that such a solution could never be kept out of the hands of hacker criminals. See how long before the vulnerability is discovered while the FBI attempts to protect it.
The FBI isn't Apple's QA department. If Apple wants people to do security research for them, they can damn well pay them for their efforts.
Apple refused to assist the FBI on this case, so why should the FBI turn around and help Apple out? Turn about fair play.
Well, actually, we don't need to leave it to a bunch of internet commenters to decide this issue -- there is an actual process described as "equities review" which the Executive Branch is responsible for, when a cyber vulnerability is known, but not yet disclosed to the public:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blo...>href=https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/28/heartbleed-understanding-when-we-disclose-cyber-vulnerabilities
The considerations described here (in whether to reveal or keep secret a vulnerability) cover:
-- How much is the vulnerable system used in the core internet infrastructure, in other critical infrastructure systems, in the U.S. economy, and/or in national security systems?
-- Does the vulnerability, if left unpatched, impose significant risk?
-- How much harm could an adversary nation or criminal group do with knowledge of this vulnerability?
-- How likely is it that we would know if someone else was exploiting it?
-- How badly do we need the intelligence we think we can get from exploiting the vulnerability?
-- Are there other ways we can get it?
-- Could we utilize the vulnerability for a short period of time before we disclose it?
-- How likely is it that someone else will discover the vulnerability?
-- Can the vulnerability be patched or otherwise mitigated?
In this case, I might argue that this is becoming so well known (though the technical specifics have not been revealed), that the FBI/US had better tell Apple to make sure that other users of the affected phones can be secured -- while the intelligence value of the exploit is rapidly decreasing due to its publicity.
Do I need to start going to my neighbors and checking their computers for malware infections? Seeing if they have their WIFI protected properly? Checking that their HDTV is connected properly?
No, and the FBI has no responsibility to disclose the method they used to access the iPhone. Odds are the FBI isn't even aware of the vulnerability, and that the vendor they chose keeps it proprietary... Unless the FBI wanted to pay some really big $$$,$$$,$$$.
Ok let's reword this :
Is the potential lost of privacy of everyone worth the potential lives of a few.
To the opposite of many people here, I value human lives a lot and each preventable death is a death too many. So if helping the FBI could save even one person, in my eyes it'll be worth it. And I know some people will put it to the extreme and ask me if a human live worth living in a "v for vendetta" society, but I found it hard to draw the line.
Elok
They aren't standing up for anyone's freedom but their own. They are standing up only for their own ability to keep control all to themselves. Would anyone here who advocates that the FBI provide the details of how they got in also mandate that any jailbreaks found also must be disclosed?
Should FBI Reveal to Apple How to Unlock Terrorist's iPhone?
Not to Apple specifically, but in future court cases if they want to use any evidence gained in a court of law, they should be required to divulge how they broke in. How can the defense be sure the data is legit otherwise?
Apple already knows it's hackable, that's why the 5S and newer have Secure Enclave.
Still, they should make the FBI rue the day they tried to destroy Apple's market, however they can. Revealing the San Bernadito phone as a ploy is the minimum they should pursue.
Yet, ultimately I hope Apple loses an inquiry about this break because it's better for all of us if they see the unconstitutional law enforcement agencies as adversaries.
There, now I've disagreed with both camps.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The choice is between helping Apple secure the phones of millions of Americans against phone-thieves, identity-thieves, virus, mal-ware and ransom-ware writers or continuing to leave their citizens vulnerable to the above so that the government can spy on it's own people.
I know what choice I think they should make.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
If Apple just offers a big enough bounty the white hat hackers will tell them...
Right?
Remember we had this conversation last week?
Wasn't this a 3rd party hack? Who says the FBI knows how they did it in the first place?
My bet is that there is a way to bit copy the chips without touching the security wipe executable on the boot security chain. That way they can take their time using powerhouse routines on real computers to decrypt the bits instead of relying on the phone hardware to do the decrypt. Most likely the password used was only a short pass word or a known Arabic word of simple short very common phrase. All of these possibilities can easily be programmed into a routine to crack a password or phrase. One would guess that because the jerk believed that he was about to go to heaven he would use something like this Dar es Salaam only with the spaces filled or as a truncated phrase with no spaces like this DaresSalaam
Either way the data would be quickly cracked because the encryption algorithm used on the security chips is not that hot a system otherwise it would run like a dog if you choose to encrypt your storage on the phone and set a password.
Oh how the tables have turned....
Yeah..good luck apple...
This should be a good test if the Apple argument holds water, that such a solution could never be kept out of the hands of hacker criminals. See how long before the vulnerability is discovered while the FBI attempts to protect it.
Strawman - Apple didn't say it couldn't be kept out of the hands of the hackers/criminals, they said such things often get leaked and it was too dangerous to create for that reason.
The *reality* of who the FBI actually are - the people in your community - who you don't know about - who work there - is that they are basically a secret mafia, usually very connected to your local law enforcement and oligarchy that runs your city - and they have super powers that you cannot even imagine to be able to raid and invade anyone's life at will. They are a separate class and truly a branch of the oligarchy, and in ways far more frightening than the mafia/thug class associated historically with other regimes because their powers and secrecy go way beyond - whereas with the former historical ones they tended to be more overtly violent thugs.
The very existence of FBI - and in fact also police in the United States - is a violation of the pact between people and government, and a clear sign that this is a de facto oligarchy, and that just because its an *oligarchy* and not some other type of fascist regime, is no less human-rights violating and dictatorial than any other.
That said, the conduct of the NSA and other federal agencies is totally reprehensible. From the viewpoint of basic human decency, if you happen to notice a problem with your neighbor - perhaps something unusual or wrong with their house or any of their possessions - it is universally understood that you should tell them about it.
The analogy with our federal government is that they are like the most shitty, disgusting neighbor who knows all these things are wrong with their neighbor's house and they are actually glad for it and refuse to tell the neighbor about it because they view those vulnerabilities as an advantage or asset to be potentially exploited. That is the EXACT OPPOSITE of how they should be acting and is more than justification for their complete and immediate disbandment and a major reform of our federal, state, and local governments from the ground up.
Wake up people.
The level of delusion, apathy, and disregard one sees in Silicon Valley is truly appalling given the seriousness of our situation in America. Our elections are a complete joke. Our entire system is becoming more and more a farce based not on the basic concept of rule of law but rather groups of thugs - usually identified as liberal - who see their jobs as entailing the constant breaking and bending of rules for one selected class or another.
So wait. If the fbi can spy - with a court order - on a whole slew of conversations. They can plant bugs and have CIs wear wires. All which the fbi is under no obligation to disclose how they did so.
So tell me. Why is Apple so special?
I'm really keen to understand - not being snarky, just want consistent arguments.
Does the FBI care more about fighting crime or reducing crime? There is a common tendency to for people and organizations to try to increase their own importance. So maybe the FBI could help to prevent X amount of crime (in the form of hacking, fraud, etc) from ever happening by helping Apple fix some security flaws. But maybe they will get more credit for allowing this vulnerability to remain and exploiting the vulnerability to catch a few more criminals. It's harder to appreciate crime prevention than punishment of criminals after the fact.
If someone invented a magic security system for houses that eliminated home invasions, this might actually be bad for the prestige of law enforcement. While it will probably reduce crime (one of the purposes of law enforcement), it reduces the reliance of the population on law enforcement and therefore decreases their importance. A flaw in the security system would create the opportunity for more people to be criminals and more opportunity for law enforcement to come to the rescue. If law enforcement can in addition actually exploit this weakness to catch a few more criminals then even better.
If the damage done by leaving the hole open exceeds the damage prevented by leaving the hole open, then it is better for society to have the hole closed, but it is not necessarily better for the FBI to have the hole closed. They won't get the blame for damage caused by an security hole unknown to the public, and they won't get any credit for the damage prevented by closing it.
It would be nice if everyone (especially public officials) did what was best for society rather than what was best for themselves, but this is a rather hard standard to hold human beings to.
I suspect it would be better for society to have the hole closed, but I wouldn't expect the FBI to have the kind of deep dedication to the improvement of society necessary to see that. Maybe it will be easier for them to see if they somehow become the victim (e.g. a scandal resulting from the FBI director's iphone getting hacked, etc).
Take for example Nancy Pelosi. She was all for government surveillance. It was only until she became one of the targets of government surveillance, that she was able to be outraged.
The FBI should be disbanded.
Considering the anti-democratic and privacy violating practices the FBI has been involved throughout its history, I can easily concur.
-SR
Stop pretending the FBI didn't already have the crack before they brought Apple to court. They were just looking for a legal precedent.
Second, stop pretending that Apple doesn't know how to crack your phone. This entire story was nothing but theater.
You are welcome on my lawn.
DMCA the FBI can get around that and all it will take is patriot act 2 to fix it.
Isn't circumventing copy and encryption protections (no matter how weak or flawed they are) a violation of the law?
Now can some like the fbi have a fake cell tower and use Emergency Call mode to bypass some security? Use it to reset a timeout on password guesses
Yesterday's flavor was indignance, so today's is defeatism? Does switching it up make your boss happy?
First, lol no the FBI has no legal obligation to tell Apple shit. I'm not even sure who would think it's even vaguely possible.
Second, I don't think this is as complex as people think if you have the resources. The data, keys, etc... are all on flash chips, and flash chips can be pulled, copied, restored, etc...
So I don't think you give a shit, in reality, about Apples secure chip wiping keys or anything like that. You just back them up and restore and try again.
This was a combination of the FBI being cheap and lazy, and the FBI wanting to pave the road for this to be easier in the future. Eventually the lazy route became saying "meh, fuck off then" to Apple and dropping the legal shit and just paying/putting in the work to break the phone.
If we did that, this "BeauHD" individual would likely be out of a job...
If you become aware of a means of breaching the security of this device that you own, you are required to reveal it to Apple. Get all other mobile firm companies to add the term to the contract. Then they either have to stop operating mobiles, or hand it over.
Phone companies do not need this information. The reason is that whatever software ordinary people can get access to, it is definitely several iterations too old software. Finding problems from stuff that was created 3 years ago is simply not useful activity. The hardening of the software needs to happen with the bleeding edge software that only the companies themselves have access to. Thus end users reporting vulnerabilities to phone companies is completely useless activity. They're way too late in their reporting. Worse, while reporting the problems, they might reveal them to the criminals too, and there might be millions of devices on the open with the existing vulnerabilties in it. Fixing just newest versions of the software simply wouldn't work either, if criminals gets access to the information. Automatic updates are helping a little, and can solve some of the problems, but basically requires that phone companies are actively updating versions of the software that are like 4 years old. This takes significant amount of effort to keep old software versions updated. But the basic problem is that the information is coming in way too late.
From an external view point the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the only real US police force. County mounties, the law en-FORCE-rs are all too often out of control, trigger happy, lard arse morons. Seriously, all local law enforcement should be disbanded in favour of state based policing overseen by Federal investigators to ensure more uniform policing across a state and equal access to investigatory powers and police oversight across the state. Sure the FBI fucks up on occasion and most of that is caused by ill-informed political appointees seeking to politicise the offices of the FBI, really dangerous and crazy stuff that should be exposed and prosecuted.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
there is an actual process described as "equities review" which the Executive Branch is responsible for
Since the FBI is a part of the Executive Branch that is pretty much textbook conflict of interest in this instance. The FBI obviously prefers to keep the ability to circumvent encryption without respect to whether this is either a good idea.
In all of your exemple, it's mostly about adult willingly deciding to take those risk.
No different here. I'm well aware I could be killed by a drunk driver tomorrow (FAR more likely than a terrorist incidentally) and yet I think it would be inappropriate of us to ban alchohol. In fact we tried that and it didn't go well...
In this exemple, we're talking about potentially stopping terrorist attack
I'm an adult willing to take the risk of a terrorist attack in order to protect my civil rights. I value my civil rights more than I fear any terrorist or terrorist group. If that makes the FBI have to work harder to convict a criminal then so be it.
Perhaps I've gone crazy but I'd swear I saw an article online a few days ago, right after the announcement that a third party had assisted the FBI, to the effect that the way it was done was by imaging the phone and using virtual copies of the image to run the passcode combinations until they hit the right one, which was then used on the actual, physical phone. Am I crazy?
If you keep data on a phone that can be unlocked with a key that the phone is able to check then that data is not secure, it is just very hard to get at. Why? Because the laws of physics do not allow the integrated circuits to be magical black boxes that cannot be monitored, copied and emulated. It is that simple. If you need a 100% secure phone it has to keep all of it's data in the cloud and even then only certain uncommon types of encryption are guaranteed to never be circumvented. This is important as the data could be intercepted and decrypted in the future when technology improves enough to allow it. i.e. Quantum computing.
So can you build a 100% secure phone, yes, but can you actually buy one? No. Will you ever be able to buy one, as a civilian? I doubt it. So is that a bad thing? Well that depends on how justified your fear of your particular government is. 20 years from now I'd be more worried by what a rouge AI may do with my data than any bunch of humans may do now.
Done.
I think the government should be allowed to develop whatever they want. They do not need to
disclose it. However, to APPLY it should take a court order.
By the same token, private individuals and companies are entitled to encrypt whatever they
want.
In the same spirit, Apple shouldn't reveal any info they have to the authorities that the authorities are being unknowingly hacked.
Good intelligence officers have never revealed sources or methods, and never will.
What would be new is if this principle weren't applied to the method used to crack the iPhone that San Bernardino County issued to the terrorist.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And no I won't look the law up for you to only dispute it.
Research this for yourself.
Hacking the phone should be fairly straight forward.
1. Pull the memory off the board and read it (ok so it is encrypted)
2. Use probes to put ram in place of the memory load the RAM with the memory contents. A little messing about to give the ram the same electrical interface as the flash not too bad, a few hours of FPGA programming should get that sorted and a board layout to hold the ram and give it interface from the device and from a master controller.
Now you can see if it will erase all data after 10 failed entries. Not that it really matters as you can bring the ram back to original.
Make a interface to digitally control the touch screen and start simulating screen presses to enter the code. Now just a matter of time. 4 digit pin is only 10000 tries 5 digit is 100000.
Probably a few ways to speed it up even more. It helps if you have the device that you are hacking and it has a simple passcode instead of fingerprint sensor.
It doesn't matter what rules you find that prohibit their behavior, the government will do whatever it wants to, and you can do nothing about it.
I'm much more afraid of the government than some theoretical terrorists. The government is real. We can all agree on that. The government does great evil. That's also easy to agree about. The government does more evil when the government is more powerful. Very easy to see. Fear the government and don't give it any more power.
The FBI is the government. Technically the people are the FBI's boss and not vice versa.
Apple owed the FBI nothing, it was not obligated by any law to support the FBI and there was no final appeal to create an obligation. On the other hand, the government of which the FBI is a part have an obligation to defend and support Apple and uphold its rights. Apple was never charged with any crime or even any rumors of criminal activity and yet the government treated it with disdain and hostility.
Many companies offer cash bounties in exchange for security bugs. This means hackers can 'sell' their bugs to the manufacture who can then pass it. The hacker gets cash and they get to feel good about what they did; but mostly they get cash. I don't believe apple pays for bugs. If they did this the company might have 'sold' their bug to apple instead of the FBI and any agency/country wanting to access an IPhone.
is it really that far fetched for the israeli company to have a bootloader hack or code injection-after-boot-but-before-unlock hack?
because that's all that was needed for hacking the pin protection system on iphone 5C. if you have that, then you can prevent the system from wiping the encryption key after 10 attempts and can attempt the right pin code infinitely.
and apple 99.99999% probably already knows how they did it, so whats there to tell.
and has usa gov been telling such things? no.
fbi is just pissed that beyond 5c they can't do that nor contract anyone to do that so simply. they're longing for the "good old days" when they could just hook it up to an app they bought from some "security" company and have everything and not even bother with a warrant.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm sure all they're doing is taking the plastic off of the NV memory part, attaching a probe, and reading out what's there. Those dies are tested that way at the factory: there will be lands on there for a probe. The government can buy a few phones of the same model for experimentation to get it right, then read out the contents of the NV memory of the phone they care about.
Once they have those contents, it's just a matter of brute-force decrypting whatever is in the personal/confidential files. Remember it is the files that are encrypted, not the memory itself. All that is needed is enough processing power to run through all the likely password combinations until they get something that looks like it was humanly input. It's not that difficult if you have the phone in your possession and a supercomputer cluster at your disposal.
Apple should file an FOIA.
The people are "technically" the FBI's "boss" in the same way that you are "technically" the "boss" of your local civil servants. To have a better understanding of the implications of that I suggest you go down to your local Department of Motor Vehicles office, fire station, or police station, and start ordering the employees around using your authority as their "boss". Try rearranging their work, make them pick up the place, maybe clean the windows. (If they don't obey, you might want to consider raising your voice, and maybe threatening their jobs.) Let us know how that works our for you.
You may have a say in selecting their actual boss, the executive (president, governor, mayor, ...), but that authority doesn't pass through the executive to empower you to boss them around.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
holy shit +seventy trillion awesome comment you must be new here etc
The FBI isn't going to shoot a guy five times who's trying to crawl along the floor while begging for his life
Hah you got moderated down because someone was offended by the realities contained in your post.
Oh well, for what it's worth, some of us read Slashdot at -1, even if only to find the one grown up comment amongst all the kids yelling at each other.
The difference between a black hat and a white hat is that the white hat tells how he got in, where as the black hat uses the hole for his own gain.
If the government wants to be a government "of the people, by the people", they need to be the good guys, not just the largest gang of bad guys.
This would be an interesting one in the US court system:
If company X finds a flaw in an apple product
then someone dies|harm|etc because of said flaw a year later in the US
but in the mean timethe US govt used said flaw to access the product for other reasons (meaning it knew about the flaw)
who gets sued?
Anyone with a scrap of American morals knows that the government's job is to protect The People. The "governments" refusal to disclose security problems so that they can oftentimes illegally access people's phones is outright TREASON. I think that the US government is totally treasonous and sold out to the highest bidder. It's a sad day when we have to rely on corporations to protect our constitutional rights.
As soon as Apple reimburses the government for every manhour expended by FBI and the material cost of the unlocking...
I'm still not convinced. Drunk driving is illegal after all.
So is terrorism. What's your point? Something being illegal doesn't keep it from happening.
And I agree about protecting your civil rights (After all, it took wars to have them), but saving the civil rights of an actual terrorist....
That's what having rule of law means. It means EVERYBODY gets treated fairly under the law, including terrorists. The Constitution enumerates several rights which are there to protect from the government abusing its power. Frankly for most of us the government is FAR more likely to be a threat to our life and liberty than any terrorist could ever hope to be. Ask any black citizen and they'll tell you that they are far more afraid of the police then they are of a criminal - and with good reason. Even our current president has been harassed by the police for no legitimate reason.
Unless of course you're insinuating that allowing the FBI to force Apple for a terrorism will mean that tomorrow they'll hack every single cellphone in the USA.
What it means is that there is a vulnerability. If the FBI can do it, so can others and the other groups are likely to be FAR more motivated to exploit it. The same security that protects the data you don't want criminals to get is what blocks the FBI too. You can't have it both ways. There is no such thing as a backdoor that only works for special groups with a warrant. Furthermore you can be quite sure that any technical flaw in the iPhone security will be repeatedly exploited by the FBI. They have a century long history of not respecting civil rights and due process and I don't see that being any different now.
But if it take a warren for the FBI to crack a phone each time, I think the justice system could handle it (I think I'll regret writing this...).
First off if you think the FBI would wait for a warrant you are being extremely naive. Second, there is no possible way to have an exploit the FBI can crack that others cannot crack as well. Even if we completely trust the FBI (which you shouldn't) there is no crack they can utilize that will not be available to other bad actors. Encryption that can be cracked is functionally identical to having NO encryption. If makes the phone extremely dangerous to rely upon for anything sensitive even if you are doing nothing illegal.
In all seriousness, if this scandal is even real (which I doubt), it took the FBI way too long to hack an iphone.
We're not talking full security here, we talking just a plain old vanilla iphone.
If I want to hack something, NO WAY it would take me from the court case to when the FBI announced it, especially as the FBI must have many many hackers working together and inside info from Apple. I have much less than them and I am sure I could have done it faster... I just don't bother as it would be unethical without a reason. The FBI had a reason and I do not, so I choose not to.
This whole case is just silliness... I am focusing on doing good things, presentations, research, new software, you know useful stuff.... not wasting time on a fake case. We should all do the same.
Apple has the money so why not buy Cellebrite (the company that did the work) and take care of that little security vulnerability? Go right to the source and then they have no concerns about ~how~ things are done.
Apple spits in the eye of the FBI and then people expect them to disclose the vulnerability (if that is what it was) to Apple?
Yeah... right.
I think it would be better if Apple spent some of its money on finding the vulnerability themselves.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Like most modern libertarian ideas, that one was tried in the late 19th century, and went terribly. You just end up with an army of private contractors who have even less oversight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
Overheard at the synagogue: "... and I said why sell it once when you can sell it twice? Do these goyim take me for a schlemiel already?"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Do you really think Apple needs help? Chances are they already know how it was done. I am more concerned about the lack of intelligence that slashdoters - and publishers - are showing!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
this creates a new ethical dilemma: Should tech companies be made aware of flaws in their products
Well, here in the civilized world, not making tech companies aware of flaws in their products borderlines the illegal. But I don't mind if USA wants to blast their tech industry back to the stone-age. More wealth for us.
But I really don't get it why americans want to do this to themselves? Perhaps what Hollywood spews out is not just propaganda - life in the USA is pure hell due to rampant crime? I really should visit some day. But I'm not sure I am brave enough.
The problem with this idea is that local law enforcement (the county Sheriff, the highest local law enforcement official) is elected by the people that they are enforcing the law over, making them (and their subordinates) answerable to those citizens. The FBI is not answerable to the common citizen, and can (not that they do, but they can) therefore run roughshod with no immediate chance of consequence.
This is a basic premise of the ideals formed by our forefathers and written in the Constitution: that the citizen has ultimate power over the Government, not the other way around. This premise is carried all the way down from the federal to the local level. State-based policing (as you put it, meaning Federal policing) is exactly the problem in many, many countries. For instance, the final judgement call for a concealed carry permit in many (if not all) counties in the country is the local Sheriff, who may personally know the permit requester, and has the final yea or nay in the process, making it a very informed, local decision, rather than a decision made by some bureaucrat 2,000 miles away. This is government by the people, for the people, as opposed to our federal system that has a difficult time representing everyone and typically ends up typically being very right or left leaning.
I think you do not give enough credit to the local law enforcement, and calling them "lard arse morons" shows exactly how far out of touch you are. You've been watching too many movies, and until you live here and work with these ladies and gentlemen, who are as professional and courteous as any Federal official, you can happily keep your silly, uninformed, and childish opinions to yourself.
On the other hand, small groups of people go wacko a lot easier than large groups do. A sheriff and deputies can run roughshod over minority rights as long as the majority doesn't disagree. It's harder (but not impossible) to do that at a higher level.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Didn't the fbi break the law here?
Consider:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Consider: ... intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss.
Whoever
I want the FBI to be very prosecuted on this.
It's not a case of it being ruled 'invalid'. It's that the companies refuse to sell unless the governments sign up to the terms. Otherwise - no phones. The idea of the government forcing a company to sell it a product on the government's terms is... interesting.
Dear Apple
Remember how we asked you to help us hack a terrorist's phone so we could save American lives and you told us to take a hike? Well now we've managed to hack the phone without your help and so we'd like to tell you how we did it and help you make it harder for us to save American lives in the future.
To this end we have put all the data on how we did it onto a locked iphone. We would like to give you the phone and let you get on with it. Remember, the key is in the box.
Yours sincerely,
The FBI
As a big purchaser, government usually looks for discounts - which would be unavailable. All of us who are interested in enforcing the thing will be looking to see if our politicians, police officers, judges, and civil servants have a mobile. The use of a mobile by an investigator in a crime investigation could render a conviction unsustainable, since the police would have been acting illegally.
All a bit unrealistic maybe - or maybe not.
There is no duty to sell to any person regardless of the terms you as vendor are imposing. This is why such clauses would be 'enforceable', not because a court wouldn't enforce them.
If they - and all other tech companies - impose a duty on government purchasers of their products to reveal any security breaches, then if the government fails to do so, it doesn't get any more toys until it conforms to the requirements of the contract.
Apple could buy that Israelian company; problem solved. They have the money to do that. But I don't believe the iPhone was opened at all. It is just a statement to diverse the attention away from the FBI.
Quisque verborum suorum optimus interpres...
How about burn dozens of people to death? Would they do that?
It was an accident, of course, not deliberate and not negligent.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
On the other hand, history has shown that local issues are much better dealt with at a local level, rather than having a heavy-handed federal agency handling a situation. And, in reference to your "wacko" comment, most of what has been coming in from the feds in the last 20 years has been wacko, in a local frame-of-mind. The feds do not understand what is happening at the local level, and worse, do not care.
The Constitution expressly gives power to the local level over the federal level on any subject not directly stated in the Constitution. Which has been bastardized and abused to the fullest by the feds in their quest over the last 150 years for power over the populace and states.
I do understand what you are saying, though. The Civil Rights movement and protection of citizens who are being unlawfully persecuted is the classic case brought up in these discussions, and was entirely justified and needed to happen. On a daily basis, in normal situations, it is a bad, bad idea and is completely unconstitutional, and many times escalates to a very deadly outcome. I.E: Waco, Oregon, Miami, Pine Ridge, Ruby Ridge, etc.
Hey.
The F.B.I. asked APPLE for help but they said NO!
With a mighty middle finger i might add!
The F.B.I. found away around it. Get over it.
Checkmate!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.