Apple's stand against the Feds

[Abdullah71601]

Originally Posted by rr-nyc

I don't know what to tell you except that post 9/11, there is a huge amount of cooperation between all the US agencies. If the NSA was able to do this, why would the FBI bother with the court order at this point?

I'm not an expert by any means but if Apples encryption is based off the users passcode and you only get 10 attempts to get it right before the phone erases, it doesn't matter that the NSA can decrypt it if they don't have the passcode to begin with. Also, ios9 has the option to use a 6 digit passcode vs 4 so that even makes it more difficult.

BTW, the article that talks about NSA and iphone is from 2013. Apple introduced ios8 with its encryption in 2014.

The foreign intelligence services cooperate with each other much more readily than with law enforcement. LE just isn't built to protect information very well. There are too many holes in the system.

The real question is why the FBI did this so publically. They could have used an NSL and secretly sought the data.

If I were to speculate, I would say the cheapest and easiest way to defeat IOS encryption is to convince users that it is unsafe. Once it is widely publicized that the FBI can break into your iPhone at will, and perhaps remotely, customers will be less likely to protect information this way. That impacts Apple sales directly, and supports LE indirectly.

I would speculate that NSA used the NSL to obtain whatever they need to hack the phone. This whole thread is predicated on the notion that Apple can give the FBI something that defeats the encryption. The NSA could have requested that capability through an NSL and have an in house capability to defeat the system.