Slashdot Mirror
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.
The article says Greylock can access "fully up-to-date IPhones".
Can Greylock access Iphones that don't allow automatic updating? If Greylock can't, then Apple has given out an update that allows outsiders to access your IPhone. So much for the Apple claim to be a privacy good-guy. Even more interesting is the possibility that Apple has pushed an OS update to phones which have automatic update turned off, something we usually associate with Microsoft.
Is there anyone out there capable of looking at the stream of bits coming-and-going and reading the flash memory that holds the updated code? And if Apple can push an update, what does that mean for the validity of the phone log when the IPhone shows up as a court exhibit? And do IPhones in Europe and China get the same treatment?
As soon as a case where the phone was unlocked with this 'tool' comes to court, the defence will challenge the evidence and independant 3rd parties will examine the device. It does not take a genius to realise that the 'magic sauce' that makes this work will soon become public.
If Apple does not already know about this and not already patched it then they are slipping and slipping badly.
The game of cat and mouse is about to go to another round.
All the hoo ha about backdoors does seem pretty suspicious. It's pretty trivial to write an app that stores things or communicates with unbreakable encryption and is pretty much immune to legislation. Surely smart criminals must do this already. So a backdoor would only be useful for catching dumb ones. Perhaps insisting that a backdoor is needed but does not exist is useful for catching dumb criminals AND not-so-smart ones.
It is their mission statement. They just seem to ignore it now.
McCabe leaked classified information to WaPo (his lawyer says he was authorized to do so, but no one else is claiming that). He then lied 5 times at least when questioned by the FBI if he leaked that information or authorized the leak. He now claims he is the good guy and Trump is the bad guy.
Comey used Russian propaganda to sign off for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign. He failed to verify the information and lied to the FISA judge claiming it was verified. Lied under oath to get a wire tap on a presidential campaign and then lied about it afterwards. Remember Watergate was just a single office break in, not a year long wiretap operation based on lies.
Stroke and Page, collaborated with McCabe to tank the Hillary classified information investigation from the start to give her a better chance of winning. Obstruction of justice, and I'm not sure what falsely running an investigation is called.
Stroke had an "insurance policy" in case Trump won the election. DOJ STILL won't hand over the 2 pages that started this entire mess, Congress is about to impeach Roseinstein and Wrey because they failed to meet the subpoena on those 2 pages.
Comey illegally leaked classified information to be published in the NYT with the intent of getting a Special Council (Muller's investigation) appointed based on lies.
Muller raided Trump's personal lawyer, who never worked on the campaign or administration breaking client attorney privilege. Cohen was working with Muller and giving everything that had been requested. Muller had made it clear that working with Trump is now a crime that he will punish.
FBI = Complete Shit
DOJ = Complete Shit
Not a single thing above had resulted in a singe charge being handed out. Flynn, who didn't lie according to Congressional over-site of Muller, has been charged with lying under oath. Comey, Stroke, Page, McCabe have all lied multiple times, provably, and not one of them has been charged.
1 Justice system for Trump and supporters (You are a criminal no matter what you did or didn't do)
1 Justice system for anti-Trump (You are not a criminal no matter what you did or didn't do)
99% of criminals fall into the 'dumb ones' category. They will use whatever is default and even if their interest in something more secure was piqued, they couldn't get the other dumb criminals they talk to about their crimes to go along with it. So whether encryption is unbreakable by default actually does have huge significance to law enforcement. It still should be since that's by far outweighed by the privacy benefit to non-criminals, but as out of touch /. is with normal people, it pales in comparison to how far removed from typical criminals it is, and there seems to be this mistaken belief that the percentage of criminals that will "just" set up a secure alternative to bad defaults is in some way significant.
If you are so against private firearm ownership and are an American, why would you remain in the one nation on the planet known for private firearm ownership, and instead try to overcome 200+ years of national history and tradition, not to mention the objections of the majority of people to abolishing the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment?
It would be much more effective to simply go live in one of the plethora of nations that already ban or heavily-restrict firearms. Just saying, as I'm not American nor live there. I have no dog in this fight. It just seems illogical. It's like demanding America switch their culture and language to match those of the Japanese instead of simply immigrating to Japan to satisfy your desire to live in Japanese culture and speak Japanese.