Apple's stand against the Feds

[HL65]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

No one elected the FBI. Nobody elected the government bureaucracy that actually runs everything. The elected officials in Congress are split on this. Many see the danger of allowing an agency a backdoor into everyone's private lives, as well as the damage to internet security that will result.

There is no way this backdoor can be protected. Consider this - The Chinese government has stolen all the technical data for every nuclear weapon design the US has. Can something be more sensitive, or more guarded than nuclear weapons designs? Yet, the US government lost control of the information. And, the US government lost control of the information on most of its security clearance holders to China hacking last summer.

Once a back door is built, can anyone reasonably expect that such a powerful tool can be protected from foreign governments, or worse, criminal and terrorist regimes? Civil liberties argument aside, do we really need the information on this phone so badly that we are willing to sacrifice security on hundreds of millions of other devices? Why would any sane person be willing to take that risk?

Again well said Abdullah! I have been following this thread closely and your points not only make the most sense to me but you have a clear grasp on the issue at hand.

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by HL65

Again well said Abdullah! I have been following this thread closely and your points not only make the most sense to me but you have a clear grasp on the issue at hand.

Thanks Ken

[fmc000]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

No one elected the FBI. Nobody elected the government bureaucracy that actually runs everything. The elected officials in Congress are split on this. Many see the danger of allowing an agency a backdoor into everyone's private lives, as well as the damage to internet security that will result.

There is no way this backdoor can be protected. Consider this - The Chinese government has stolen all the technical data for every nuclear weapon design the US has. Can something be more sensitive, or more guarded than nuclear weapons designs? Yet, the US government lost control of the information. And, the US government lost control of the information on most of its security clearance holders to China hacking last summer.

Once a back door is built, can anyone reasonably expect that such a powerful tool can be protected from foreign governments, or worse, criminal and terrorist regimes? Civil liberties argument aside, do we really need the information on this phone so badly that we are willing to sacrifice security on hundreds of millions of other devices? Why would any sane person be willing to take that risk?

[daveathall]

Originally Posted by daveathall

I can't help thinking that this whole thing would have been better served behind closed doors. If, by some chance Apple win this, then the most secure computer for any global terrorist to store names, addresses, income, expenditure etc is an iPhone. Why would a terrorist use anything else? It is FBI/CIA/NSA proof.

I wonder if there is some bluff, double bluff, smoke and mirrors going on here.

Any thoughts?

[TheBluePrince]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

No one elected the FBI. Nobody elected the government bureaucracy that actually runs everything. The elected officials in Congress are split on this. Many see the danger of allowing an agency a backdoor into everyone's private lives, as well as the damage to internet security that will result.

There is no way this backdoor can be protected. Consider this - The Chinese government has stolen all the technical data for every nuclear weapon design the US has. Can something be more sensitive, or more guarded than nuclear weapons designs? Yet, the US government lost control of the information. And, the US government lost control of the information on most of its security clearance holders to China hacking last summer.

Once a back door is built, can anyone reasonably expect that such a powerful tool can be protected from foreign governments, or worse, criminal and terrorist regimes? Civil liberties argument aside, do we really need the information on this phone so badly that we are willing to sacrifice security on hundreds of millions of other devices? Why would any sane person be willing to take that risk?

The FBI and the bureaucracy didn't just appear out of the ether. If you citizens don't like or trust it/them then it's up to you to elect politicians who will change it/them. If you haven't done that so far then we must assume you are happy with the status quo.

Your whole argument comes down to the fact you don't trust your own government, I would look to how you can improve that relationship as a country

[TheBluePrince]

Originally Posted by HL65

Again well said Abdullah! I have been following this thread closely and your points not only make the most sense to me but you have a clear grasp on the issue at hand.

On the contrary I have to respectfully disagree. Abdullah has made various posts with assumptions and "facts" stated that just aren't true (e.g. The NSA can decrypt anything, it's known there is nothing of value on the phone), however eloquently he makes them sound

[WRwatchATL]

I've been thinking, some have said that is Apple do not comply with the FBI, then they are aiding terrorist organizations.

However, if this order goes through, and Apple is forced to create a backdoor into their system, then this information is stolen by some hackers or terrorists: is it then the FBI that is willingly aiding terrorism, and potentially responsible for another disaster?

[HL65]

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

On the contrary I have to respectfully disagree. Abdullah has made various posts with assumptions and "facts" stated that just aren't true (e.g. The NSA can decrypt anything, it's known there is nothing of value on the phone), however eloquently he makes them sound

And we are all entitled to our own opinion so no need to engage me in your battle as I was simply responding to Abdullah. I clearly disagree with most of what you said and for many reasons none of which I will get into here as I don't want to have to ban myself.

So carry on and let's not get too deep in to politics or perhaps just let it go as the thread has been getting very close to danger zone.

[DeeTee]

Originally Posted by daveathall

Any thoughts?

This thing has blown up so big, it's kinda hard to bring it to a "back room" negotiation now.

All this makes me wonder if this is all BS and the government already has the means to crack or break anything, and just making all this stuff up in the media to fool criminals into thinking they are using "safe" devices.

[DeeTee]

Originally Posted by HL65

And we are all entitled to our own opinion so no need to engage me in your battle as I was simply responding to Abdullah. I clearly disagree with most of what you said and for many reasons none of which I will get into here as I don't want to have to ban myself.

So carry on and let's not get too deep in to politics or perhaps just let it go as the thread has been getting very close to danger zone.

People have been tip toeing on the edge of this one, but lots of great point have been made.

One thing we can all agree on guys is we all love watches! Let me throw in one of my personal pics to relax on

[TheVTCGuy]

Originally Posted by daveathall

Any thoughts?

I agree with you Davethall, IMHO, there was a way that this COULD have been compromised in some way, I.E. Apple could have provided the information to the government on this specific phone, then either held back the hacking procedure, or changed the next version of IOS to make it useless in the future. I am the Director of Engineering for a major technology company, although this specific procedure is way out of my area of expertise, you can not convince me this could not have been accomplished. Would this have cost money and resources on Apple's part? Maybe tremendous amounts of both? Absolutely, and they should have charged the Feds accordingly with a hefty profit to spare; I personally would have no issue at all with this. Instead, (again, just MHO as I can not offer proof) Apple decided to take this public and either make themselves a martyer for the common American, or just get publicity out of a massacre where innocent humans were slaughtered worse then animals.

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

No one elected the FBI. Nobody elected the government bureaucracy that actually runs everything. The elected officials in Congress are split on this. Many see the danger of allowing an agency a backdoor into everyone's private lives, as well as the damage to internet security that will result.

There is no way this backdoor can be protected. Consider this - The Chinese government has stolen all the technical data for every nuclear weapon design the US has. Can something be more sensitive, or more guarded than nuclear weapons designs? Yet, the US government lost control of the information. And, the US government lost control of the information on most of its security clearance holders to China hacking last summer.

Once a back door is built, can anyone reasonably expect that such a powerful tool can be protected from foreign governments, or worse, criminal and terrorist regimes? Civil liberties argument aside, do we really need the information on this phone so badly that we are willing to sacrifice security on hundreds of millions of other devices? Why would any sane person be willing to take that risk?

APPLE, has to make the back door.... So, you are saying you do not trust the security at Apple. If they do not turn over the back door procedure to the FBI, but merely supply them with the information off an IPhone, then anything BAD that happens from this is on Apple, not the Feds. You are saying you have no trust in the very company you are defending. Now, if they DO turn over the entire hacking procedure to the Feds, then they need to render it useless with an update to the IOS, probably a costly and difficult procedure which they should be healthily reimbursed for by the government, something I have supported all a long.

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

The FBI and the bureaucracy didn't just appear out of the ether. If you citizens don't like or trust it/them then it's up to you to elect politicians who will change it/them. If you haven't done that so far then we must assume you are happy with the status quo.

Your whole argument comes down to the fact you don't trust your own government, I would look to how you can improve that relationship as a country

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

On the contrary I have to respectfully disagree. Abdullah has made various posts with assumptions and "facts" stated that just aren't true (e.g. The NSA can decrypt anything, it's known there is nothing of value on the phone), however eloquently he makes them sound

A agree with Blue Prince.

[TheVTCGuy]

BTW, beautiful Yachtmaster 32866!

[daveathall]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

This thing has blown up so big, it's kinda hard to bring it to a "back room" negotiation now.

All this makes me wonder if this is all BS and the government already has the means to crack or break anything, and just making all this stuff up in the media to fool criminals into thinking they are using "safe" devices.

Yes, it makes one wonder, Like I said before, "bluff, double bluff, smoke and mirrors.

[123Blueface]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

This thing has blown up so big, it's kinda hard to bring it to a "back room" negotiation now.

All this makes me wonder if this is all BS and the government already has the means to crack or break anything, and just making all this stuff up in the media to fool criminals into thinking they are using "safe" devices.

Wouldn't that be a riot.

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by daveathall

Any thoughts?

The US has a mechanism called a National Security Letter (NSL). An agency can secretly send a company an NSL and obtain what it needs. It's backed up by a secret court and comes with a gag order so that nobody knows it happened. You make a very good point if you are asking why the FBI didn't do this.

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

On the contrary I have to respectfully disagree. Abdullah has made various posts with assumptions and "facts" stated that just aren't true (e.g. The NSA can decrypt anything, it's known there is nothing of value on the phone), however eloquently he makes them sound

The NSA doesn't need to hack AES 256, they need to hack the keys. If they obtain the IOS and hardware data through an NSL they can write their own backdoor and design their own interface. They wouldn't need Apple at all, they can do it all in house, and nobody will ever know (until the next Snowden).

The encryption strength relies on the assumption that the personal password keys are random. With normal people passwords are rarely random, rather they are something easy to remember and type in. And people leave passwords in unencrypted storage on all sorts of machines. It's not that hard for an analyst to obtain a password history and identify patterns. And, if the employer who owns the phone kept a history of the employee terrorist's passwords on work systems, the personal keys can be hacked fairly quickly.

As an exercise, contrast what you have as passwords on your personal devices with mine at work - 16 characters minimum, no vowels, no repeating characters, no recognizable keyboard patterns (e.g. 7895123), at least three caps, at least three numbers, at least three special characters. That approximates random and is probably the proverbial ten year hack. Joe homegrown terrorist is probably a few days.

[daveathall]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

The US has a mechanism called a National Security Letter (NSL). An agency can secretly send a company an NSL and obtain what it needs. It's backed up by a secret court and comes with a gag order so that nobody knows it happened. You make a very good point if you are asking why the FBI didn't do this.

I didn't know about it. This whole situation (as far as I now see it) is unwarranted. It should have been used.

The fact that this type of letter exists should make arguments on both side moot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by daveathall

I didn't know about it. If this is true, this whole situation is unwarranted. It should have been used.

This letter should make arguments on both side moot.

Why did Tim Cook not reference this in his open letter one wonders.

An NSL is sneaky. If an agency is using it, they don't want anyone to know what they are getting. It could be difficult for the FBI to use the information in court. And there is still the question whether it is legal for an agency to compel a company to create something, which will likely be the basis of Apple's argument in the courts.

[bdex75]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

An NSL is sneaky. If an agency is using it, they don't want anyone to know what they are getting. It could be difficult for the FBI to use the information in court. And there is still the question whether it is legal for an agency to compel a company to create something, which will likely be the basis of Apple's argument in the courts.

I read the letter that Tim Cook put out via the apple site yesterday. And I will guarantee that will be their position. They do not have it. And therefore cannot give it to anyone. And their attorney seems pretty certain that no government agency or lawsuit can make them develop something that does not exist.

This will get interesting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[123Blueface]

Just heard Bill Gates has publicly sided with the FBI.

[HL65]

Originally Posted by 123Blueface

Just heard Bill Gates has publicly sided with the FBI.

Shocker...He and Apple are such great allies.

[123Blueface]

Originally Posted by HL65

Shocker...He and Apple are such great allies.

True,
Just surprising in that you would think in this regard, they would see eye to eye.

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by TheVTCGuy

APPLE, has to make the back door.... So, you are saying you do not trust the security at Apple. If they do not turn over the back door procedure to the FBI, but merely supply them with the information off an IPhone, then anything BAD that happens from this is on Apple, not the Feds. You are saying you have no trust in the very company you are defending. Now, if they DO turn over the entire hacking procedure to the Feds, then they need to render it useless with an update to the IOS, probably a costly and difficult procedure which they should be healthily reimbursed for by the government, something I have supported all a long.


.

There was a quote from Apple in the news this week that said they expected to be under constant attack from hackers once it got out that they had the capability. The quote also said they couldn't rely on their own people or government employees to resist the big money that would be out there for someone to hand over the technology. Apple was pretty adamant that they didn't think it could be protected.

It's not about who gets the blame for the leak. It's about not creating something so insidious that every evil so and so in the world will want to have it.

The best way to not get shot is to not participate in gunfights. That's Apple's strategy. If they don't create it, there's no way it can leak.

Did you figure out the Android or pull the IOS out of the bin?

[wheelman]

Originally Posted by hdms

What do you guys think about Tim Cook's stand on user data privacy against FBI requesting for access? Here's the letter that Tim Cook posted.

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

What I don't understand is how the FBI can't unlock the phone when any teenager who steals a phone has it unlocked in minuets.

National security trumps all and these guys were not suspected terrorists they were bonified terrorists so they should unlock it or throw Tim Cook in jail for violating a court order. You will see how fast he throws his values out the window to save his own ass. Just my 2 cents.

[TheBluePrince]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

The US has a mechanism called a National Security Letter (NSL). An agency can secretly send a company an NSL and obtain what it needs. It's backed up by a secret court and comes with a gag order so that nobody knows it happened. You make a very good point if you are asking why the FBI didn't do this.





The NSA doesn't need to hack AES 256, they need to hack the keys. If they obtain the IOS and hardware data through an NSL they can write their own backdoor and design their own interface. They wouldn't need Apple at all, they can do it all in house, and nobody will ever know (until the next Snowden).

The encryption strength relies on the assumption that the personal password keys are random. With normal people passwords are rarely random, rather they are something easy to remember and type in. And people leave passwords in unencrypted storage on all sorts of machines. It's not that hard for an analyst to obtain a password history and identify patterns. And, if the employer who owns the phone kept a history of the employee terrorist's passwords on work systems, the personal keys can be hacked fairly quickly.

As an exercise, contrast what you have as passwords on your personal devices with mine at work - 16 characters minimum, no vowels, no repeating characters, no recognizable keyboard patterns (e.g. 7895123), at least three caps, at least three numbers, at least three special characters. That approximates random and is probably the proverbial ten year hack. Joe homegrown terrorist is probably a few days.

That's essentially what the FBI are asking Apple to do for them without the data being destroyed by the security system but what you said before was that the NSA could decrypt the phone and then that the NSA had stated they had the capability to decrypt anything, which is not the case nor possible.

Having been an old Techy back in the day on very very big computer systems I imagine my passwords are much the same format as yours even on things that don't matter just through habbit

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

That's essentially what the FBI are asking Apple to do for them without the data being destroyed by the security system but what you said before was that the NSA could decrypt the phone and then that the NSA had stated they had the capability to decrypt anything, which is not the case nor possible.

Having been an old Techy back in the day on very very big computer systems I imagine my passwords are much the same format as yours even on things that don't matter just through habbit

Have a cupcake, you're looking stressed

.

[TheBluePrince]

Make it a Gingerbread Man and all my passwords are yours :)

[Star Ferry]

Originally Posted by Abdullah71601

Have a cupcake, you're looking stressed

.

Normally I don't care for cupcakes but that picture made me hungry

[rr-nyc]

Originally Posted by TheBluePrince

The FBI and the bureaucracy didn't just appear out of the ether. If you citizens don't like or trust it/them then it's up to you to elect politicians who will change it/them. If you haven't done that so far then we must assume you are happy with the status quo.

Your whole argument comes down to the fact you don't trust your own government, I would look to how you can improve that relationship as a country

Since you continue to overlook or fail to see the obvious, I'll help you out.

This isn't limited to just the US Government and it's citizens. If Apple complies to this court order, counties like China and Russia, and just about every other country would force Apple into giving them the backdoor for their own national security. So while you trust your government to access your personal information because you have nothing to hide, there are a few billion people that don't have luxury. There are governments that don't care about privacy, civil liberties, or due process.

But I suppose to some people, the thorough investigation of a work-issued phone that once belonged to a guy that killed 14 people 2.5 months ago is more important.

[TheBluePrince]

Originally Posted by rr-nyc

Since you continue to overlook or fail to see the obvious, I'll help you out.

This isn't limited to just the US Government and it's citizens. If Apple complies to this court order, counties like China and Russia, and just about every other country would force Apple into giving them the backdoor for their own national security. So while you trust your government to access your personal information because you have nothing to hide, there are a few billion people that don't have luxury. There are governments that don't care about privacy, civil liberties, or due process.

But I suppose to some people, the thorough investigation of a work-issued phone that once belonged to a guy that killed 14 people 2.5 months ago is more important.

Yes quite, if Apple choose to operate in foreign markets then they have to abide by the rules and courts there too, they knew the risks and chose to take them. If people thought oh hang on a minute maybe my data isn't secure on my Apple device maybe they'd stop using their Apple device to store data, maybe they'd stop buying Apple devices. If the Chinese stop buying Apple devices then Apple as a company is finished. It's all down to the bottom line for Apple here.

[rr-nyc]

Originally Posted by 123Blueface

Just heard Bill Gates has publicly sided with the FBI.

That's because Microsoft hasn't kept it's software safe since it's inception.

In all seriousness, Bill Gates, like all of us, are entitled to his opinion