Pedestrians will need implants! It astounds me daily how many volunteer to be a Darwin award winner as they step off the curb without looking both ways expecting vehicles to stop for them.
Near hotels in the UK and Australia are words on the curb reminding Mericans to look "the other way" too. Those little reminders are fully lost to the goof with his or her nose in his phone.
I recently found a crazy turn signal in this area where vehicles were given a right turn green arrow at the same time pedestrians were given a walk indication. Traffic folk are so worried about automobiles that they ignore bicycles and pedestrians.
Should have said... it came with Windows 7 pre-loaded on to a 1Tb SSD in a 500Gb partition [at my request]. I've since dist-upgraded twice [now on 17.3/Rosa] and it works brilliantly...
I am open to trying things. Will try Mint/17.3/Rosa on my Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100U CPU @ 2.30GHz Tomorrow.. There are multiple Skylake flavors out there. There are multiple BIOSes out there as well. News at eleven as they used to say.
Skylake software support seems to be a bit funky at times. I suspect it will improve. I just picked up a small skylake box and had to tell GRUB to boot the kernel with "nosmp" to install Ubuntu. There is some support forum mumble foo about RAM and if you device is unstable try to update the BIOS and to try a different stick of RAM or RAM vendor.
This darn thing is FAST even with one lung as it were. Old school interpreted stuff like FORTH can run out of cache, if you are not greedy and suffer personal affection for bloated gunk you too can fly. Anyone that reads this in a month should expect improvements sufficient to make this a nevermind. However if software and QA engineers with internals are busy working for a TLA it could take longer.
You can fix the bad APIs, or bypass them, amend them, work around them, etc.....
In part this is the value of hypertext and CGI. An interface bridges A to B and perhaps back. It can invoke functionality in a chaotic arrangement line an adventure game or it can organize the steps into a smooth sane flow. The concept of this abstraction is not unique to HTML and the web.
Commonly an engineer will craft an interface that matches the outline of the design specification documentation. It facilitates check off and testing but stinks as a user interface. The user interface people can change a quirky or error prone interface and make customers happy with a product yet change zero functionality.
The same hypertext reorganizing markup mentality can also apply to an API.
Though this isn't a modern diesel electric boat. The US know exactly where it is.
Perhaps not... http://thediplomat.com/2015/12... This is Chinese but the success of the Chinese makes it obvious that modest priced diesel electric boats have capabilities worth exploring. Replace the lead acid batteries of a WW2 U-boat with modern Tesla class batteries and Tesla class electric motors and Bob's yer Uncle. The better class of milling machines and NC machine tools on the open market should allow building a quieter anything. No need for a pressure hull like a the Challenger Deep class hull.
Legislation by regulation is lazy law. This is legislation by secret regulations. Troubling.
Regulations are supposed to be reviewed by congress. A bunch of lazy or impertinent thugs inserted language that allows regulation to pass into the status of law if unchallenged. It is impossible to challenge a secret change....
Kafka is giggling. Joseph Heller is giggling. George Orwell did not author a plan, don't ya know... it was a cautionary tail.
Wait someone is knocking on the door. I was nine and asked the grandmother of the neighbor kid what those numbers on her arm were. I was an ignorant silly nine year old. Not stupid... I did listen the next day to her daughter. Pay attention.
Um, what constitutional protection? The FBI went through a court, that is the extent of the protection the constitution guarentees with the fourth amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
Do you try to say that there isn't probable cause, there want an Oath or affirmation, or that the thing to be searched was not described well enough?
Not simple.
The source code is a stretch, the seizure of source code was not specified in the writ. It is more than source code...
This would be a second pile of worms. And I suspect interesting bits are not Apples to release. It is not uncommon for hardware to be built with devices that are opaque without information obtained via NDA. Files that contain offsets for registers and functions that describe and make the device do its thing fall into this NDA world like nVidia driver blobs in Windows and Linux. For the FBI to work with blobs Apple would have to engineer an API and deliver binary blobs. A single chunk of silicon can contain the IP of numerous companies. Some are patent exchange agreements with exclusions to sell and disclose.
The complexity of patent contracts and portfolios is non trivial. This can extend to tools and tool chains. Apple recently chopped LLVM from some of its build tool chains read why. Swift and other internal tools and libraries may apply.
It is likely that source is shared on many other devices so to reach in and grab source, tools, make files and more for one device would be a reach into all of the products: iPad, Mac, iTunes, AirPlay, Apple Watch.
The Apple ecosystem is not public. You cannot hire individuals with knowledge of iPhone and IOS internals without their being in violation of individual NDAs. Training... there is no external training program for internals.
A less worthy bit of hardware is the Pandaboard and obtaining full documentation is non trivial. When Texas Instruments backed off interesting software devel stopped. The graphics hardware IP blobs are often the tightest in the industry and would be necessary. Radios, network chips, USB devices.
Copyright... it took a couple years to identify all the copyright owners in some flavors of BSD Unix and rewrite or license them. Transfer to someone without permission could be expensive. Most licenses are not transferable... sure if identified in open court but most contracts have silence clauses.
Some IP might be international in origin. Can this court reach out to compel IP from a Japanese, Korean, Chinese Canadian company.
Time fort this department to foresware anything more secure than a flip phone,......
I expect to hear rumors that a police department swears that the encryption on the body cameras and patrol car camera video archive is so strong that it cannot be recovered when compelled to in a civil cases of a wrongful _____ case. And the key was lost when.....
Some courts have already been presented with edited video (altered) as if it was a complete and accurate copy. Such stuff is uncommon and less tolerated but a lost encryption key is next.
You can? Where? Biggest I can find in 2.5" is 2TB, so where are you finding 16TB SSD drives?
Toshiba has a 3TB drive for laptops. http://www.kitguru.net/compone... This comment makes Google's point: "..Since the hard drive employs so many platters, it is 15mm thick, which means that it will not fit into the vast majority of laptops. According to Toshiba, the hard drive is designed for “personal external storage and space-constrained needs”....
In a custom machine room today a "machine" is a thin'ish PWB + processor and memory where the limits of thickness are bound by the cooling system on the CPU and the stack of RAM. This tells me that the drive could be thicker by a lot and still run cool enough. Once spinning the power of a drive is almost unaffected by the number of platters. A smaller diameter could spin up quicker with less power.
The SSD flash based form factor is cooling limited but is "simply" chips on PWB and a Google sized farm could justify an in house build to match space and cooling needs. On the cooling side constant airflow with no paths that are "too easy" is important and it makes sense to replace air dams with functionality. Thus thicker devices where thin is the current choice makes sense. Spinning media has thermal qualities that packed Flash, DRAM and friends to not.
My thought on laptops is that thin and light is no longer an interesting feature to me. Keyboards have suffered to no end. Internal volume for a second drive or additional battery has approached ridiculous. Hanging an external "thing" on laptops seems way too common and is simply lame. Heck some twit just patented a computer that is reconfigurable and made up of parts. The industry has moved this direction on and off for +40 years. One 40 year old cartoon had a tiny modern like laptop and near invisible wire to a 3 ton lump of hardware and battery. How is this different from some cell phone designs.
But laptops are a digression to the needs of Google. Me I would be happy with a laptop that could accommodate a 15 mm. drive. As long as the screen is not so heavy that the whole thing needs a tripod to stand up like the convertible touchscreen things that might appear to be popular because they are so strongly marketed.
No. Its about getting Apple to assemble existing bits and bolts which force the lock to stay open while the government tries a millions keys, one after the other.
Its a reasonable request. Apple's upset because it shows customers that encryption is a charade on a device you don't fully control.
Formally the bits and bolts do not exist. The court order demands that they be created, tested and applied.
The demand is for a service and a software product that is contrary to Apple's business. One key business depends on a trusted platform to make payments.
The law does not care but Apple cares a lot about the reality that this would be the first of many phones. Subsequent court orders will make much the same demand and apple will have to comply. Divorce court, Russian, French, Cuban courts.
Because this involves Apple signature codes Apple should worry that the value of their signature is compromised by this service. The service demands that Apple engineer, design, sign and install this hobbled version of its product. In the future someone could demand the change, inspect the phone, restore the software and return the device to the owner.
In this case the criminal acts make me wish there was a way to open exactly this one this device and no other and have the authorities satisfy their need. That does not seem to be the case, the problem is that once done there is proof that it can be done again and again.
For many of use this is a do not care because it requires physical control of the device. However anyone in any nation place or time could have their device opened and once active data can be inspected, added or deleted.
A previous service generated an image Each transfer of that image could be audited and multiple check copies made providing checks and balances. This not so much. While the FBI has had very few problems with their evidence management this context is more difficult to audit. Consider how one might keep an Etch-a-Sketch image from being altered or damaged in transit.
Most are unconvinced that there is anything on the device. Many see that this crime is so evil that they are willing to allow this order to be executed when more common victim less crimes would allow less emotion and more more worry about consequences.
There are no laws and this order will have lasting effect as law without action from elected officials.
Apple has over $200 Billion in cash. They problably made a million in the time it took you to write your post. Money is a meaningless incentive to them (as well as a meaningless impediment to doing what was asked).
No. The reason Apple makes so much money is because many believe the set of devices and software services provided by Apple are sufficiently secure.
If Apple caves... entire markets will look for other options.
Sure, at one level this is about money. The writ compels Apple to develop and provide a service and business Apple does not want to be in. A service that risks their cash generation services in fact.
I suppose this is a futile effort here on Slashdot, but maybe perhaps reading the FBI's court brief might answer/allay some of the "smell" of the charade (way to murder a metaphor, m8)
Moreover, contrary to Apple's recent public statement that the assistance ordered by the Court “could be used over and over again, on any number of devices” and that “[t]he government is asking Apple to hack our own users," the Order is tailored for and limited to this particular phone......
Yesm It is important to note that this court and this writ does not ask for access to all phones with a magic key. However it does establish a service that other courts (domestic and international) can compel.
i.e. having demonstrated your ability that this is possible... we also demand the same service in pursuit of the issues before this (different?) court. i.e. having demonstrated your ability we demand you price and deliver such a service for our internal investigation into suspected illegal affairs by the estranged spouse of, the priest accused of, the child suspected of taking a selfie photo that qualifies as child pornography. Because this is a court order there is only complying. It is clear that this is the first phone.... many more cases will demand such a service.
hooray now if you had only logged in we would know who to congratulate.
Also eggs have been around much longer than chickens.
The birds aren't the only ones hurting with the warmest winter on record people haven't needed to buy nearly as much gas and electric to heat their homes this year.
AND more importantly. Temperature of egg incubation determines sex in Alligator mississippiensis http://www.nature.com/nature/j... This implies a lot of -- well you do the math "temperatures less than or equal to 30 C producing all females, greater than or equal to 34 C yielding all males."
They keep trying, however the true fact remains no encryption was used by these terrorists.
Nor would it have helped prevent 9/11. Encryption is nothing. Intelligence and cooperation are everything.
Well we honestly do not know if encryption was used.
I am curious what encryption tool and method was used to encode "Tora Tora Tora".
We do know something about the diplomatic communications sent........a series of 14 encrypted radio messages from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington that will conclude with a declaration of war. The final message to be received precisely at 1:00 pm on December 7, 1941 after which the Japanese embassy is to destroy the code machines....
This may be what the FBI is after but the reality is this warrant even if ultimately denied would cause the advisary of the FBI to change keys and change methods. That may have happened and the FBI may know via classified paths what is on the phone and to introduce the phone into evidence without the service this warrant demands risk disclosure of methods and tools still classified or run outside of the law.
The key problem for Apple is this would be the first phone. Once the first phone is serviced any number of like warrants can be issued for apple to service via a tool and business that they do not want to be in and a business that risks the security of their Apple Pay system, cash flow that is iTunes and more. Any court civil or criminal can demand another one just like the one documented in this court transcript.... Apple cannot sit in judgement of these writs -- they at great cost might challenge them but many will not contain information to hint that they are frivolous, criminal or are shilled by foreign agents. Other international courts can demand service as well. Russia, China, Israel, Cuba, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Iceland... Once the tool is engineered and shown to exist there is no limit.
This lack of a limit may be obvious to Apple -- their previous phones could have the binary bits downloaded as an image and inspected offline. The download was a service, Apple may have lost vast funds servicing these requests and Apple may have seen abuses they are unable to discuss, disclose or even enumerate. There is one famous case in China.
This is a big deal.
My best analogy for this/. company context: Q: Would you sleep with me for free? A: No Q: Would you sleep with me for a Billion? A: Sure Great, now that we have established what you are and that you are willing to service me we can negotiate a better more reasonable price.
That's easy to solve, charge the government a few million dollars for your assistance. You need access, sure no problem, we'll build you a server farm to crack the encryption key using brute force... It will cost you 600 million dollars.
This is not a "crack the encryption key" request. It is cleverly limited to entering a bad unlock code ten times wipes the device. The clever part is this is: "The first phone"
Once the 10x lockout is removed others have shown that a four button code will be hacked in a day and a six button code in about a week. The FBI seems to have spent month and an untold number of test phones to crack this nut or they are simply lazy and want a service they can just compel.
Note that Apple cannot pick and choose which court order they service. Legal, illegal, we have no clue about the parade of court orders serviced on previous phones and devices. Apple may have seen astounding and numerous abuses in previous writs and Apple may be bound by these orders sealed, FISA, NDA, threat under the cover of the law domestic and international and no longer wants to play.
Consider a teanager visiting a market for a soda pop. Both get a coke and have a nice day. Next time the friend swipes a pop or a bottle of beer... then that friend swipes more than a bottle of beer, then that friend escalates to armed robbery, that friend threatens bodily harm if you say something, that X-friend then murders a shopkeeper.
A lot of what we are seeing in these early days of big data and pervasive surveillance is modest teenage risk taking. Adults need to catch up and pay attention.
But it doesn't change the fact that there's still only 10,000 4-digit passcodes. They could even do a hacky solution like finding a way to disable the wipe after incorrect attempts and brute forcing from there. If they can pick apart the chips, I'm sure they can find a way.
Of course, that's assuming Apple actually wants to help, which I would guess they probably don't (and they shouldn't IMO).
The important part is simply overlooked by the coverage. Complying with this court order is not about one phone or one crime. It is about "The First" phone.
One common rant is that this crime is so evil that that we need to do anything and everything possible. This ignores the reality of what abuses can be done for First+N phones.
Any court order: civil, criminal, domestic, international must be complied with.
China, Oregon, Iran, France, Germany will all be able to demand the service.
All can demand the service be delivered inside their borders as there is no technical reason to not. Apple has no legal footing to deny any order issued by due process including secret FISA warrants. Divorce, employment actions... Apple is not indemnified if there is a flaw in their code. Apple is not in a position to deny the service even for a stolen or border confiscated phone.
A secret warrant could demand the secret bits be moved from Apple to an undisclosed site where Apple would no longer have control.
Should the method escape Apple other complications follow.
Recall Apple has skin in this game. Apple Pay, iTunes are serious cash generation tools that if compromised would risk vastly more than the considerable value of the present value of Apple.
Point of sale payment is a global issue and may be sufficient to exclude this writ from the "All Writs Act" that seems to be central to the FBI strategy.
The other implication is that a writ can compel any company to develop and engage in any service. "Any service" risks a lot. There is nothing to exclude FISA writs from forcing Intel to, from AT&T to, from Comcast to... develop tools and services to deliver to "Bob" at a loading dock someplace.
This seems small to some but how large is a fulcrum? "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Add overreaching under the color of the long arm of law and the lever is in place.
Note well this investigation has no bounds or time limit. Today: http://abc7.com/news/fbi-serve... the FBI searches Farook's brother's home months after the crime and long after the FBI knew who and where he was.
There be dragons here.... Pay attention. This is a big deal.
This is exactly what they want to do... The problem is the phone will wipe itself after 10 failed attempts, so the gov't wants Apple to write them software to bypass the wipe and continue the brute force attack. I'm the only person I've ever met who has more than a 4 digit code to unlock my phone, and I don't even have anything to hide!
This is a big deal... The first time Apple complies with this request it then becomes a case of another one just like the other one. A flood of "me-too" court orders would arrive at Apple inside of an hour.
Court orders all have the same force of law and once the service is established as possible all must be served. It can be a dalliance in a divorce case. It can be a health care provider that believes you are acting badly.
There is no national boundary that magically contains these requests. Once the capability is establishes a court in Germany, France, Russia, Iran, Cuba can all assert they have a right and demand the service.
What the judge fails to comprehend is this class of request is kin to requiring a Genetic company to engineer a virus that would only be administered to a single pig but without industry and national safeguards to protect the world. There are national and international standards for working with viruses like Ebola -- but nothing like that exists for computer viruses like this. The anti-virus folk (industry) may capture and dissect a virus captured from the wild but are not in the business of designing and manufacturing them.
It is also true that federal law: "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" may make this request less than legal. There is no defendant involved simply evidence. Would complying violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or would it be tampering with evidence? To prove that evidence was not tampered with the process and code might need to be divulged (OMG).
The anchors under iPay and iTunes link to banking and are likely covered by the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act".
In parallel others should file evidentiary protection writs to capture the iPhone and other digital footprints of the judge and those requesting this action. IMO it is sufficiently ill considered that it risks larger issues of national security than the data that might be on the phone. i.e. those crafting this request might be provocateurs and agents of other companies, other nations or treasonous individuals and as such need to be investigated.
This is not a simple issue of one phone this is a global infrastructure issue.
So what do you do when the pager goes off. Do you run and find a pay phone? Do you reach into your pocket for your cell phone?
What do you plan to do when the customer captures your cell phone number and just calls you back?
A pager does have value because the coverage was nearly universal. They are reliable. A classic pager just displays numbers to call back or pre-shared code numbers. The day I got a text/message pager that could give me a message "All OK" in contrast to a call back number that was run to find a phone leash was like being released from chains. It still took years to retrain managers and customers to send status hints in contrast to a summons in the dark.
Mostly get a modern phone with a lot of battery life. Car chargers are important to have. Get a spare battery strategy.
Coverage... all cell coverage is not equal. Cell coverage has gaps that pager service does not. One AC was right... pagers do not transmit so might be allowed inside when smartphones are not. Camera... most repair folk now photograph the device serial number, make and model. Some places prohibit cameras...
Political campaigns have gotten very automated and a smart phone will allow the party to help you do what they want. The political tools allow a canvasser to know the registration and names of folk behind the door at any address even geolocation with GPS. Vans driving voters to the ballot places are able to pass over individuals registered for the 'other' party.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple needs to renew the insertion of Map Trap equivalents in their sources.
https://www.gislounge.com/map-...
Done correctly they are an easy way to watermark your code and
sets of them can be searched for from time to time.
your_ardvark(Ants_in_Pants_timer_knob) /*about 15 seconds this is 15 year old code */
Let's see how long it takes for google to find the one above.
If it was to sleep silently on the seafloor how does it protect itself
from colonizing creatures, sediment and detritus?
Sort of interesting...
Pedestrians will need implants!
It astounds me daily how many volunteer to be a Darwin award winner
as they step off the curb without looking both ways expecting vehicles to stop for them.
Near hotels in the UK and Australia are words on the curb reminding Mericans to
look "the other way" too. Those little reminders are fully lost to the goof with
his or her nose in his phone.
I recently found a crazy turn signal in this area where vehicles were given
a right turn green arrow at the same time pedestrians were given a walk indication.
Traffic folk are so worried about automobiles that they ignore bicycles and
pedestrians.
Now that Twitter has made its final decision, that it will be sticking strictly to the 140-character limit....
Simple solution...
Tweet: "Bob check your mail"
Tweet: "Bob check my blog"
Tweet: "Bob look up! I am sitting across from you at the dinner table."
Should have said... it came with Windows 7 pre-loaded on to a 1Tb SSD in a 500Gb partition [at my request]. I've since dist-upgraded twice [now on 17.3/Rosa] and it works brilliantly...
I am open to trying things. Will try Mint/17.3/Rosa on my Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100U CPU @ 2.30GHz
Tomorrow.. There are multiple Skylake flavors out there. There are multiple BIOSes out there as
well. News at eleven as they used to say.
Q:
Vim or Emacs?
A: ed
Skylake software support seems to be a bit funky at times.
I suspect it will improve.
I just picked up a small skylake box and had to tell
GRUB to boot the kernel with "nosmp" to install Ubuntu.
There is some support forum mumble foo about RAM and if you device is unstable
try to update the BIOS and to try a different stick of RAM or RAM vendor.
This darn thing is FAST even with one lung as it were.
Old school interpreted stuff like FORTH can run out of cache,
if you are not greedy and suffer personal affection for bloated
gunk you too can fly.
Anyone that reads this in a month should expect improvements
sufficient to make this a nevermind. However if software and QA
engineers with internals are busy working for a TLA it could take longer.
You can fix the bad APIs, or bypass them, amend them, work around them, etc. ....
In part this is the value of hypertext and CGI.
An interface bridges A to B and perhaps back.
It can invoke functionality in a chaotic arrangement line an adventure game
or it can organize the steps into a smooth sane flow.
The concept of this abstraction is not unique to HTML and the web.
Commonly an engineer will craft an interface that matches the
outline of the design specification documentation. It facilitates
check off and testing but stinks as a user interface.
The user interface people can change a quirky or error prone interface
and make customers happy with a product yet change
zero functionality.
The same hypertext reorganizing markup mentality can also apply to an API.
Bangladesh, meanwhile, is blaming the U.S. Federal Reserve for trusting their credentials.
Wat?
The FBI wants into this... clearly they used and iPhone.
Though this isn't a modern diesel electric boat. The US know exactly where it is.
Perhaps not...
http://thediplomat.com/2015/12...
This is Chinese but the success of the Chinese makes it obvious
that modest priced diesel electric boats have capabilities worth
exploring. Replace the lead acid batteries of a WW2 U-boat with
modern Tesla class batteries and Tesla class electric motors
and Bob's yer Uncle.
The better class of milling machines and NC machine tools on the open
market should allow building a quieter anything. No need for a
pressure hull like a the Challenger Deep class hull.
Modern diesel electric boats are very quiet and pose a challenge to those
that worry about such things.
They are so quiet that a failure could happen without notice
limiting the ability to provide aid. Politics can get in the way.
The impossible task of tracking these boats makes speculation
over the exact events more fantasy than fact.
Lets home it is simply a broken radio or corrupt encryption key
to be replaced with tomorrow's good secret key.
Legislation by regulation is lazy law. This is legislation by secret regulations.
Troubling.
Regulations are supposed to be reviewed by congress.
A bunch of lazy or impertinent thugs inserted language that allows regulation
to pass into the status of law if unchallenged.
It is impossible to challenge a secret change....
Kafka is giggling.
Joseph Heller is giggling.
George Orwell did not author a plan, don't ya know... it was a cautionary tail.
Wait someone is knocking on the door.
I was nine and asked the grandmother of the neighbor kid what those numbers on her arm were.
I was an ignorant silly nine year old. Not stupid... I did listen the next day to her daughter.
Pay attention.
Um, what constitutional protection?
The FBI went through a court, that is the extent of the protection the constitution guarentees with the fourth amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
Do you try to say that there isn't probable cause, there want an Oath or affirmation, or that the thing to be searched was not described well enough?
Not simple.
The source code is a stretch, the seizure of source code was not specified in the writ.
It is more than source code...
This would be a second pile of worms.
And I suspect interesting bits are not Apples to release.
It is not uncommon for hardware to be built with devices that are opaque without
information obtained via NDA. Files that contain offsets for registers and functions
that describe and make the device do its thing fall into this NDA world like nVidia driver
blobs in Windows and Linux.
For the FBI to work with blobs Apple would have to engineer an API and deliver binary blobs.
A single chunk of silicon can contain the IP of numerous companies.
Some are patent exchange agreements with exclusions to sell and disclose.
The complexity of patent contracts and portfolios is non trivial.
This can extend to tools and tool chains.
Apple recently chopped LLVM from some of its build tool chains read why.
Swift and other internal tools and libraries may apply.
It is likely that source is shared on many other devices so to reach in
and grab source, tools, make files and more for one device would be
a reach into all of the products: iPad, Mac, iTunes, AirPlay, Apple Watch.
The Apple ecosystem is not public. You cannot hire individuals with knowledge
of iPhone and IOS internals without their being in violation of individual NDAs.
Training... there is no external training program for internals.
A less worthy bit of hardware is the Pandaboard and obtaining
full documentation is non trivial. When Texas Instruments backed off
interesting software devel stopped. The graphics hardware IP blobs
are often the tightest in the industry and would be necessary. Radios,
network chips, USB devices.
Copyright... it took a couple years to identify all the copyright owners
in some flavors of BSD Unix and rewrite or license them. Transfer
to someone without permission could be expensive.
Most licenses are not transferable... sure if identified in open court
but most contracts have silence clauses.
Some IP might be international in origin. Can this court reach out
to compel IP from a Japanese, Korean, Chinese Canadian company.
Someone is smoking some wackey tbackey...
Time fort this department to foresware anything more secure than a flip phone, ......
I expect to hear rumors that a police department swears that the encryption .....
on the body cameras and patrol car camera video archive is so strong that it cannot be
recovered when compelled to in a civil cases of a wrongful _____ case.
And the key was lost when
Some courts have already been presented with edited video (altered) as if
it was a complete and accurate copy. Such stuff is uncommon and less
tolerated but a lost encryption key is next.
You can? Where? Biggest I can find in 2.5" is 2TB, so where are you finding 16TB SSD drives?
Toshiba has a 3TB drive for laptops.
http://www.kitguru.net/compone...
This comment makes Google's point: "..Since the hard drive employs so many platters, it is 15mm thick, which means that it will not fit into the vast majority of laptops. According to Toshiba, the hard drive is designed for “personal external storage and space-constrained needs”....
In a custom machine room today a "machine" is a thin'ish PWB + processor and memory
where the limits of thickness are bound by the cooling system on the CPU and the stack
of RAM.
This tells me that the drive could be thicker by a lot and still run cool enough.
Once spinning the power of a drive is almost unaffected by the number of platters.
A smaller diameter could spin up quicker with less power.
The SSD flash based form factor is cooling limited but is "simply" chips on PWB
and a Google sized farm could justify an in house build to match space and cooling
needs.
On the cooling side constant airflow with no paths that are "too easy" is important
and it makes sense to replace air dams with functionality. Thus thicker devices
where thin is the current choice makes sense. Spinning media has thermal qualities
that packed Flash, DRAM and friends to not.
My thought on laptops is that thin and light is no longer an interesting feature to me.
Keyboards have suffered to no end. Internal volume for a second drive or additional
battery has approached ridiculous. Hanging an external "thing" on laptops seems
way too common and is simply lame. Heck some twit just patented a computer
that is reconfigurable and made up of parts. The industry has moved this direction
on and off for +40 years. One 40 year old cartoon had a tiny modern like laptop and near invisible
wire to a 3 ton lump of hardware and battery. How is this different from some cell phone
designs.
But laptops are a digression to the needs of Google. Me I would be happy with a laptop that could accommodate
a 15 mm. drive. As long as the screen is not so heavy that the whole thing needs a tripod to stand up like the convertible
touchscreen things that might appear to be popular because they are so strongly marketed.
No. Its about getting Apple to assemble existing bits and bolts which force the lock to stay open while the government tries a millions keys, one after the other.
Its a reasonable request. Apple's upset because it shows customers that encryption is a charade on a device you don't fully control.
Formally the bits and bolts do not exist. The court order demands that they be created, tested and applied.
The demand is for a service and a software product that is contrary to Apple's business.
One key business depends on a trusted platform to make payments.
The law does not care but Apple cares a lot about the reality that this would be the first
of many phones. Subsequent court orders will make much the same demand and apple
will have to comply. Divorce court, Russian, French, Cuban courts.
Because this involves Apple signature codes Apple should worry that the value of their signature
is compromised by this service. The service demands that Apple engineer, design, sign and install
this hobbled version of its product. In the future someone could demand the change, inspect the
phone, restore the software and return the device to the owner.
In this case the criminal acts make me wish there was a way to open exactly
this one this device and no other and have the authorities satisfy their need.
That does not seem to be the case, the problem is that once done there is
proof that it can be done again and again.
For many of use this is a do not care because it requires physical control
of the device. However anyone in any nation place or time could have their
device opened and once active data can be inspected, added or deleted.
A previous service generated an image Each transfer of that image could
be audited and multiple check copies made providing checks and balances.
This not so much. While the FBI has had very few problems with their evidence
management this context is more difficult to audit. Consider how one might
keep an Etch-a-Sketch image from being altered or damaged in transit.
Most are unconvinced that there is anything on the device. Many see that this
crime is so evil that they are willing to allow this order to be executed when
more common victim less crimes would allow less emotion and more more worry
about consequences.
There are no laws and this order will have lasting effect as law without action
from elected officials.
Apple has over $200 Billion in cash. They problably made a million in the time it took you to write your post. Money is a meaningless incentive to them (as well as a meaningless impediment to doing what was asked).
No. The reason Apple makes so much money is because many believe the
set of devices and software services provided by Apple are sufficiently secure.
If Apple caves... entire markets will look for other options.
Sure, at one level this is about money.
The writ compels Apple to develop and provide a service and
business Apple does not want to be in. A service that risks their
cash generation services in fact.
I suppose this is a futile effort here on Slashdot, but maybe perhaps reading the FBI's court brief might answer/allay some of the "smell" of the charade (way to murder a metaphor, m8)
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2716011/Apple-iPhone-Access-MOTION-to-COMPEL.txt
https://assets.documentcloud.o...
Moreover, contrary to Apple's recent public statement that the .....
assistance ordered by the Court “could be used over and over again,
on any number of devices” and that “[t]he government is asking Apple
to hack our own users," the Order is tailored for and limited to this
particular phone.
Yesm It is important to note that this court and this writ does not ask for access to all phones
with a magic key. However it does establish a service that other courts (domestic and
international) can compel.
i.e. having demonstrated your ability that this is possible ... we also demand the same service
in pursuit of the issues before this (different?) court.
i.e. having demonstrated your ability we demand you price and deliver such a service for
our internal investigation into suspected illegal affairs by the estranged spouse of, the
priest accused of, the child suspected of taking a selfie photo that qualifies as child
pornography.
Because this is a court order there is only complying.
It is clear that this is the first phone.... many more cases will demand such a service.
hooray now if you had only logged in we would know who to congratulate.
Also eggs have been around much longer than chickens.
The birds aren't the only ones hurting with the warmest winter on record people haven't needed to buy nearly as much gas and electric to heat their homes this year.
AND more importantly.
Temperature of egg incubation determines sex in Alligator mississippiensis
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
This implies a lot of -- well you do the math
"temperatures less than or equal to 30 C producing all females, greater than or equal to 34 C yielding all males."
That is a lot of bull crock...
They keep trying, however the true fact remains no encryption was used by these terrorists.
Nor would it have helped prevent 9/11. Encryption is nothing. Intelligence and cooperation are everything.
Well we honestly do not know if encryption was used.
I am curious what encryption tool and method was used to encode "Tora Tora Tora".
We do know something about the diplomatic communications sent.... ....a series of 14 encrypted radio messages from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington that will conclude with a declaration of war. The final message to be received precisely at 1:00 pm on December 7, 1941 after which the Japanese embassy is to destroy the code machines....
This may be what the FBI is after but the reality is this warrant even if ultimately denied would cause the
advisary of the FBI to change keys and change methods. That may have happened and the FBI may
know via classified paths what is on the phone and to introduce the phone into evidence without the
service this warrant demands risk disclosure of methods and tools still classified or run outside of the law.
The key problem for Apple is this would be the first phone. Once the first phone is serviced any number ....
of like warrants can be issued for apple to service via a tool and business that they do not want to be in and
a business that risks the security of their Apple Pay system, cash flow that is iTunes and more.
Any court civil or criminal can demand another one just like the one documented in this court transcript
Apple cannot sit in judgement of these writs -- they at great cost might challenge them but many will not
contain information to hint that they are frivolous, criminal or are shilled by foreign agents. Other
international courts can demand service as well. Russia, China, Israel, Cuba, Germany, United Kingdom, France,
Iceland... Once the tool is engineered and shown to exist there is no limit.
This lack of a limit may be obvious to Apple -- their previous phones could have the binary bits downloaded
as an image and inspected offline. The download was a service, Apple may have lost vast funds servicing these requests
and Apple may have seen abuses they are unable to discuss, disclose or even enumerate. There is one famous
case in China.
This is a big deal.
My best analogy for this /. company context:
Q: Would you sleep with me for free? A: No
Q: Would you sleep with me for a Billion? A: Sure
Great, now that we have established what you are and that you are willing to service
me we can negotiate a better more reasonable price.
Apple has no choice but to say no.
That's easy to solve, charge the government a few million dollars for your assistance. You need access, sure no problem, we'll build you a server farm to crack the encryption key using brute force... It will cost you 600 million dollars.
This is not a "crack the encryption key" request.
It is cleverly limited to entering a bad unlock code ten times wipes the device.
The clever part is this is: "The first phone"
Once the 10x lockout is removed others have shown that a four button code will be hacked
in a day and a six button code in about a week.
The FBI seems to have spent month and an untold number of test phones
to crack this nut or they are simply lazy and want a service they can just
compel.
Note that Apple cannot pick and choose which court order they service.
Legal, illegal, we have no clue about the parade of court orders serviced
on previous phones and devices. Apple may have seen astounding
and numerous abuses in previous writs and Apple may be bound by these
orders sealed, FISA, NDA, threat under the cover of the law domestic and
international and no longer wants to play.
Consider a teanager visiting a market for a soda pop. Both get
a coke and have a nice day. Next time the friend swipes a pop or
a bottle of beer... then that friend swipes more than a bottle of beer,
then that friend escalates to armed robbery, that friend threatens bodily harm if
you say something, that X-friend then murders a shopkeeper.
A lot of what we are seeing in these early days of big data and pervasive
surveillance is modest teenage risk taking. Adults need to catch up
and pay attention.
But it doesn't change the fact that there's still only 10,000 4-digit passcodes. They could even do a hacky solution like finding a way to disable the wipe after incorrect attempts and brute forcing from there. If they can pick apart the chips, I'm sure they can find a way.
Of course, that's assuming Apple actually wants to help, which I would guess they probably don't (and they shouldn't IMO).
The court order may prove moot.
http://www.popsci.com/box-can-...
The important part is simply overlooked by the coverage.
Complying with this court order is not about one phone or one crime.
It is about "The First" phone.
One common rant is that this crime is so evil that that we need to do anything
and everything possible. This ignores the reality of what abuses can be
done for First+N phones.
Any court order: civil, criminal, domestic, international must be complied with.
China, Oregon, Iran, France, Germany will all be able to demand the service.
All can demand the service be delivered inside their borders as there is no technical reason to not.
Apple has no legal footing to deny any order issued by due process including secret FISA warrants.
Divorce, employment actions...
Apple is not indemnified if there is a flaw in their code.
Apple is not in a position to deny the service even for a stolen or border confiscated phone.
A secret warrant could demand the secret bits be moved from Apple to an undisclosed site
where Apple would no longer have control.
Should the method escape Apple other complications follow.
Recall Apple has skin in this game. Apple Pay, iTunes are serious
cash generation tools that if compromised would risk vastly more than
the considerable value of the present value of Apple.
Point of sale payment is a global issue and may be sufficient
to exclude this writ from the "All Writs Act" that seems to be
central to the FBI strategy.
The other implication is that a writ can compel any company to
develop and engage in any service. "Any service" risks a lot.
There is nothing to exclude FISA writs from forcing Intel to,
from AT&T to, from Comcast to... develop tools and services
to deliver to "Bob" at a loading dock someplace.
Today Apple may be able to sidestep this for a number of months
with this hack:
http://www.popsci.com/box-can-...
This seems small to some but how large is a fulcrum?
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Add overreaching under the color of the long arm of law and the lever is in place.
Note well this investigation has no bounds or time limit.
Today: http://abc7.com/news/fbi-serve...
the FBI searches Farook's brother's home months after the crime and long
after the FBI knew who and where he was.
There be dragons here....
Pay attention.
This is a big deal.
This is exactly what they want to do... The problem is the phone will wipe itself after 10 failed attempts, so the gov't wants Apple to write them software to bypass the wipe and continue the brute force attack. I'm the only person I've ever met who has more than a 4 digit code to unlock my phone, and I don't even have anything to hide!
This is a big deal...
The first time Apple complies with this request it then becomes a case of another one just like the other one.
A flood of "me-too" court orders would arrive at Apple inside of an hour.
Court orders all have the same force of law and once the service is established as possible
all must be served. It can be a dalliance in a divorce case. It can be a health care provider
that believes you are acting badly.
There is no national boundary that magically contains these requests. Once the capability
is establishes a court in Germany, France, Russia, Iran, Cuba can all assert they have a right
and demand the service.
What the judge fails to comprehend is this class of request is kin to requiring a Genetic company
to engineer a virus that would only be administered to a single pig but without industry and national
safeguards to protect the world. There are national and international standards for working
with viruses like Ebola -- but nothing like that exists for computer viruses like this. The anti-virus
folk (industry) may capture and dissect a virus captured from the wild but are not in the business
of designing and manufacturing them.
It is also true that federal law: "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" may make this request
less than legal. There is no defendant involved simply evidence. Would complying
violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or would it be tampering with evidence?
To prove that evidence was not tampered with the process and code might need to be
divulged (OMG).
The anchors under iPay and iTunes link to banking and are likely covered by the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act".
In parallel others should file evidentiary protection writs to capture the iPhone and other
digital footprints of the judge and those requesting this action. IMO it is sufficiently
ill considered that it risks larger issues of national security than the data that might
be on the phone. i.e. those crafting this request might be provocateurs and agents of other
companies, other nations or treasonous individuals and as such need to be investigated.
This is not a simple issue of one phone this is a global infrastructure issue.
Plot twist: the psychopaths running things are not elected officials, nor even in the public sector or military.
AND they are international.
So what do you do when the pager goes off.
Do you run and find a pay phone?
Do you reach into your pocket for your cell phone?
What do you plan to do when the customer captures your cell phone number
and just calls you back?
A pager does have value because the coverage was nearly universal.
They are reliable.
A classic pager just displays numbers to call back or pre-shared code numbers.
The day I got a text/message pager that could give me a message "All OK" in contrast
to a call back number that was run to find a phone leash was like being released from
chains. It still took years to retrain managers and customers to send status hints in
contrast to a summons in the dark.
Mostly get a modern phone with a lot of battery life.
Car chargers are important to have.
Get a spare battery strategy.
Coverage... all cell coverage is not equal. Cell coverage has gaps that pager service does not.
One AC was right... pagers do not transmit so might be allowed inside when smartphones are not.
Camera... most repair folk now photograph the device serial number, make and model.
Some places prohibit cameras...
Political campaigns have gotten very automated and a smart phone will allow the party
to help you do what they want. The political tools allow a canvasser to know the registration
and names of folk behind the door at any address even geolocation with GPS. Vans driving
voters to the ballot places are able to pass over individuals registered for the 'other' party.
Make a list of the details and go shopping.