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FBI Had No Way To Access Locked iPhone After Terror Attack, Watchdog Finds (zdnet.com)
The FBI did not have the technical capability to access an iPhone used by one of the terrorists behind the San Bernardino shooting, a Justice Department watchdog has found. ZDNet: A report by the department's Office of Inspector General sheds new light on the FBI's efforts to gain access to the terrorist's phone. It lands almost exactly a year after the FBI dropped a legal case against Apple, which had refused a demand by the government to build a backdoor that would've bypassed the encryption on the shooter's iPhone. Apple said at the time that if it was forced to backdoor one of its products, it would "set a dangerous precedent." Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in the southern Californian town in December 2015. The 11-page report said that the FBI "had no such capability" to access the contents of Farook's encrypted iPhone, amid concerns that there were conflicting claims about whether the FBI may have had techniques to access the device by the time it had filed a suit against Apple. Those claims were mentioned in affidavits in the court case, as well as in testimony by former FBI director James Comey.
Continuing to discuss this topic just plays into the hands of people who want to take your rights away. By keeping the discussion going for years they start to normalize the idea that there is something to discuss - i.e. that both sides have merit. They don't. It is just a case of one side having no point but refusing to die. But by keeping the articles flowing the public starts to get the subtle "both sides must have a point" message.
You aren't just stepping onto the slippery slope, you are helping them spread the crisco. Just stop.
The FBI did not have the technical capability to access an iPhone used by one of the terrorists behind the San Bernardino shooting
So what? For most of the FBI's existence they didn't have access to any iPhones at all and yet somehow they still managed to be an effective police force. It is highly unlikely that any critical evidence was on the phone that could not be gathered by any other means or that the inability to unlock the phone would result in an acquittal. It's no different than if the phone was damaged or lost. The FBI can suck it up and do some old fashioned investigating. They have access to metadata, witnesses, video, testimony, and much more. If that isn't enough it's unlikely that the iPhones will make or break the case.
Continuing to discuss this topic just plays into the hands of people who want to take your rights away.
If you don't discuss the topic then the people who want to remove your rights will succeed in doing so. Heck we're still having to argue against idiots who think racism is good, vaccines are bad, homeopathy is effective, climate change isn't real, the moon landings were a hoax, evolution is a "theory", etc. If you don't engage the idiots and slap them down then the idiots will win by default.
Unfortunately we have a lot of news media that continue to present every story as if there are two equally valid sides to every argument. THAT needs to change. But the need to fight ignorance will never end.
We must violate the Rights of peaceful, law abiding citizens and take away their guns because a small minority of the population misuses them to commit crimes, including murder.
Are you seriously comparing a purpose built weapon designed explicitly to kill living things with a multi purpose computer/phone? Spare me the false equivalency. Nobody is arguing for or against gun control here but it isn't at all the same issue or the same logic.
We can't have a judicially overseen process to break the encryption on the personal devices of small minority terrorist or other criminals because it would infringe on the Rights of peaceful, law abiding citizens.
When you can design an encryption system that isn't rendered useless by the presence of a back door then your strawman might be credible. Unfortunately the laws of mathematics are pretty inflexible and nobody has figured out a way to put in a back door that only trusted parties have access to. Even if we completely trusted the government (which we don't) it still would be a bad idea.
Did I get it right?
Not even a little bit.
I believe that the FBI is attempting to distract us from the critical, core issues of this debate. In arguing the technical details of accessing cell phones, they distract from the critical speech issues. They REALLY don't want us to ask:
The US government has managed to bypass the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments by creating and extending the 3rd party doctrine. This doctrine roughly states that once information passes out of an individual's direct control, he can no longer exercise any control over it. This gives the government easy access to huge amounts of shared information.
The "Responsible Encryption" debate is a new legal theory to destroy speech and freedom. It is a "No Party Doctrine". That is, No Party, except the government, is allowed to control information. The No Party Doctrine says that information is so important to the government, that nobody except the government should be allowed to control it. There is no information so sensitive, private or protected that it should escape government control. Since information is so important, individuals must not be allowed to control it through their speech, actions, tools, or situations.
The FBI is cheerfully stating that the creators of the constitution would have allowed complete government control if only they had realized that information was important to a criminal investigation.
We should denounce the "Responsible Encryption" proposals as a straightforward attack on our freedom of thought, speech and association.
Instead, we should act to limit the 3rd party doctrine and restore our rights of speech and association.
Maybe start weaning yourself (and others) off 'news' and TV more generally - if you can't stop them from spreading outright nonsense, you can at least stop listening to it.
Pretending idiots don't exist will result in the idiots winning. Boycotts don't work unless they involve enough people to really make a difference and to get that you have to have already changed minds rendering the boycott pointless. Worthwhile to try to convince others to listen to credible news sources but tuning out without ensuring others are tuning out too is a Bad Idea.
What rights exactly are you referring to? What is the difference between the FBI reading a dead gunman's postal mail, and the FBI having Apple send an over the air update to unlock the dead gunman's phone.
If I really need to explain that to you please hand in your geek card. Breaking the encryption on the iPhone renders ALL encryption on the iPhone useless. It isn't just the government we are worried about here. If the US government can get into my correspondence then so can malware makers, foreign governments, thieves, etc. Any process used to open one iPhone effectively opens ALL iPhones. If I have to explain why that is bad then you need to go get some education before this discussion goes any further.
They already had full authority to seize all of the gunman's correspondence.
Authority != Ability. Furthermore there are civil rights issues in play here that extend FAR beyond the gunman's correspondence. I'm not worried particularly about the gunman. I'm worried about MY rights. We have limits on law enforcement because they have a LONG history of abusing their authority.
If he had a storage unit, would you oppose the FBI compelling them to hand over the key?
Him handing over a key to his storage locker does not render my storage locker accessible to thieves. Seriously? You don't see the difference?