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Grieving Father is Begging Apple to Unlock His Dead Son's iPhone (mirror.co.uk)
"A grieving father is begging Apple to allow him access to the photos stored on his dead son's iPhone," reports Time. In September Leonardo Fabbretti's adopted son died of bone cancer at age 13, and the father believes that two months of photographs are still stored on his son's iPhone. Last fall Apple staff attempted to retrieve the photos from their cloud-storage service, but the iPhone hadn't been synced before the 13-year-old's death. "Don't deny me the memories of my son," the father writes in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
The father's letter tells Apple that "Although I share your philosophy in general, I think Apple should offer solutions for exceptional cases like mine," according to a British newspaper, while 88% of respondents in their online poll believed that Apple should unlock the phone.
As a minor, they are unable to enter into contract. Therefor the phone belongs to the father in the first place.
In other news, 88% of respondents don't understand math and only appeals to emotion.
But this one goes to 11. "Think of the dead children!"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I would create multiple usernames/passwords that are allowed to unlock the system. E.g. Multi login. They keystore that secures the encryption on the device would then have to be doubly encrypted with two seperate encryption keys on the device using a public key of the 2nd user available on iCloud. The second encrypted store could be uploaded to iCloud and only decoded by that 3rd party who would then have access to decrypt the duplicated information.
You could do PK key exchange via bluetooth or something more personal to prevent against MITM attacks.
The device would then need a time delay to prevent that designated user from logging onto your phone through casual day to day usage. The device should only be accessable 30 days after not being used and would require the user to access iCloud to fetch and decrypt the store. The device would still be protected by encryption but may be decrypted by a designated person(s) so long as the designated person is nominated upfront.
I'm curious why it didn't occur to him to have the phone unlocked before the sons death. It sounds like the child was terminally ill for all of that time.
I can feel for him, but why should the rest of the iPhone users suffer because the teen didn't have the files backed up to the cloud and left the phone locked. AFAIK, the iPhone just defaults to encryption, it doesn't require it and it certainly doesn't prevent you from writing the password down.
Part of estate planning in the 21st century is making sure that things like that are available to those that need them.
policy (what this is about; its not/never about a single 'phone') should never be made by those who are under emtional stress. this is what gave us the patriot act.
you want more of that shit? then let grieving this and that make our laws. we'll be 100% reactionary and create 10x as many laws for every 'upset parent' in the world.
someone has to stand up and say 'enough is enough' and those who had a tragedy occur are NOT the ones who should ever get to define new laws or rules that the rest of us have to endure.
this is not about compassion; (nice try gov shill) but its about stopping the ever-encroaching 'appeal to emtion' that is crippling this country. yes, crippling. and it has to stop.
call me a monster. I could give a shit what you think about me. the point is that RATIONAL people don't make laws for shit like this.
lots of bad things happen to people, but that's life. it sucks. life sucks, overall. what do you want; every single emotional appeal to justify new public policy?
again, you're an idiot or a shill. go fuck off. we see thru your shit and are not buying it.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You could also give your Dad the code to your iPhone, specially when you're fighting cancer and could die literally any minute.
If he didn't do it, it *might* be because he wouldn't have wanted his dad anywhere near his phone. But we'll never know now, will we ?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
The right to privacy doesn't end at death.
By law, it does. Once dead, you are no longer a person.
So, leave a will or similar. Cache all of your passwords in a two-factor form (two people who don't know who the other is, nor what the other's instructions are RE password determination). Your will can disclose this little dance they have to do. IANAL, but believe that a will is A/C privileged and/or private, so reduced risk there.