Tim Cook Says Apple Will Fight Court Order to Unlock iPhone
As a follow up to Bubbleheads Page on this topic-
Every time new technology arrives, criminals and law enforcement again restart the old privacy argument. First it was letters. then telegraphs, then landline telephones and so on. Once again we must draw the line between our privacy and law enforcement.
Excerpts from Wired
Magistrate Sheri Pym, in the US District Court of Central California, ordered the tech giant to provide the FBI with software designed to defeat a self-destruct mechanism on the iPhone, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the news. The self-destruct mechanism automatically erases data on a phone after ten failed password attempts, or rather erases a key that could be used to decrypt that data.
Transformative-Now almost anyone can encrypt beyond any reasonable means, and some of us it seems can encrypt beyond any known means. On one hand we want terrorists and their support system taken down. But would you not also want to protect that video or still images of a policeman’s use of force in public? Let your cameras contents remain your sole property, so overzealous officers can’t destroy evidence.
“Apple’s reasonable technical assistance shall accomplish the following three important functions,” the document notes. “It will bypass or disable the auto-erase function whether or not it has been enabled; it will enable the FBI to submit passcodes to the subject device for testing electronically via the physical device port, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or other protocol available on the subject device and it will ensure that when the FBI submits passcodes to the subject device, software running on the device will not purposefully introduce any additional delay between the passcode attempts beyond what is incurred by Apple hardware.”
That’s it from the court. Pending a win on up the chain, right in the environment of a SCOTUS short one Justice and in an election year. Get that popcorn.
This would allow FBI agents to attempt to open the phone using multiple password tries—a method known as bruteforcing—without worrying that the data will be inaccessible to them forever.
Once such a technology exists, we should assume it will be used widely by law enforcement. See previous examples. GPS tracking. Stingrays. Dirtboxes. ISP black boxes shunting data as agencies see fit. But lets call the above paragraph the pro government side.
“What the court is essentially ordering Apple to do is custom-build malware to undermine its own product’s security features, and then cryptographically sign that software so the iPhone will trust it as coming from Apple,” says Kevin Bankston, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute. “But If a court can legally compel Apple to do that, then it likely could also legally compel any other software provider to do the same, including compelling the secret installation of malware via automatic updates to your phone or laptop’s operating system or other software. In other words, this isn’t just about one iPhone, it’s about all of our software and all of our digital devices, and if this precedent gets set it will spell digital disaster for the trustworthiness of everyone’s computers and mobile phones.”
And there ya have it, the anti government argument.
More: Magistrate Orders Apple to Help FBI Hack San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone
