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Lawmakers Call FBI's 'Going Dark' Narrative 'Highly Questionable' After Motherboard Shows Cops Can Easily Hack iPhones (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: This week, Motherboard showed that law enforcement agencies across the country, including a part of the State Department, have bought GrayKey, a relatively cheap technology that can unlock fully up-to-date iPhones. That revelation, cryptographers and technologists said, undermined the FBI's renewed push for backdoors in consumer encryption products. Citing Motherboard's work, on Friday US lawmakers sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, doubting the FBI's narrative around 'going dark', where law enforcement officials say they are increasingly unable to obtain evidence related to crimes due to encryption. Politico was first to report the letter. "According to your testimony and public statements, the FBI encountered 7,800 devices last year that it could not access due to encryption," the letter, signed by 5 Democrat and 5 Republican n House lawmakers, reads. "However, in light of the availability of unlocking tools developed by third-parties and the OIG report's findings that the Bureau was uninterested in seeking available third-party options, these statistics appear highly questionable," it adds, referring to a recent report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General. That report found the FBI barely explored its technical options for accessing the San Bernardino iPhone before trying to compel Apple to unlock the device. The lawmaker's letter points to Motherboard's report that the State Department spent around $15,000 on a GrayKey.
There is an inferred belief set inside law enforcement that in order to accomplish the greater good, it is perfectly acceptable to occasionally stoop to the level of the dirty criminals. Hollywood and the entertainment industry have consistently reinforced this logical fallacy with hundreds (thousands?) of stories with protagonist rogue cops who do what needs to be done to catch the bad guy.
The problem is, once you stoop to a despicable act, it is so much easier to stoop the next time. (K. Hepburn)
The freedoms we enjoy are quite precious, and the sacrifices made to preserve them do not all occur on the field of battle... sometimes the good guys have to carry the enormous burden of a moral compass during the pursuit of the most immoral.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's not abuse. You just get a Democrat to fund a disgraced foreign spy to write some fiction, then hand that to an Obama appointee judge who will rubber stamp literally anything that you want to do.
It's called shitting on society, law, and the Constitution, which is the Democratic strategy to retaking the country.
However, in light of the availability of unlocking tools developed by third-parties and the OIG report's findings that the Bureau was uninterested in seeking available third-party options, these statistics appear highly questionable"
FBI: "I wish to plead incompetence."
Ezekiel 23:20
No, all this means is that thereâ(TM)s a security vulnerability in iOS that the greykey guys are aware of, but Apple is not.
I'd call them more incompetent than anything else. They received tips about the Florida school shooter including his name and what he was going to do and they did nothing. Typical big government.
After the "Fast & Furious" fiasco where the ATF were attempting to illegally allow straw-purchasers from Mexican drug cartels to buy and smuggle US weapons into Mexico to "give ammo" to the gun-control lobby, it would not surprise me at all to learn of covert 'stand-down' orders regarding the Parkland shooter (especially considering the bizarre behavior/non-action of LEOs at the scene on top of a plethora of ignored warnings beforehand), and authorities at high levels in government responsible for deliberately and intentionally allowing those children to die to advance the gun-control agenda.
It's strange, because gun-related homicides over the last 25 years are down over 50% and gun violence victimization is down over 75%. School shootings are also way down, with the '90s being the worst.
The US government is rapidly coming to more-resemble a hostile occupying force than a peaceful domestic government in place by the will of the people it governs.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A conspiracy theory involving dozens of police from several different agencies all knowingly and without knowledge leaking allowing someone to go on a shooting rampage in a highschool is modded +4 Interesting and Insightful? You have got to be kidding me. This is the kind of bullshit they put on InfoWars.
And another big fat [citation needed] on Fast & Furious being motivated by helping gun control (a program, by the way, started under George W. Bush in 2006).
That this isn't modded down or at least Funny makes me more disappointed in the direction the comments section here is heading more than anything else, and there's heavy competition, even though I do agree that violence is way down and our government is becoming a hostile occupying force, not to mention fully support the 2nd.