3 ms·

It’s not about this 5c

29 points by davidbarker 11y ago

makecheck 11y ago
I don’t think Apple will lose. First, there is an obvious pre-technology version of this problem: I have some information in my brain, and only in my brain, that I refuse to tell you. You are unable to pursuade me to cough it up. Therefore, you never get the information. The FBI should be forced to treat an encrypted phone as being equally opaque and inaccessible. You can see the phone, you suspect it contains something you want, you can’t get it. You can see my head, you suspect it contains something you want, you can’t get it. Besides, Apple has the money to fight forever in legal proceedings (shouldn’t be hard...seems the FBI had to drag out an 18th-century clause to even make the request; it should only become more comical from here on out). Also, phones are sold everywhere in the world. You don’t even need a phone to be a “phone” because anything with WiFi access can effectively communicate; it doesn’t matter if the device was purchased domestically or even has the ability to connect to cellular networks. So yeah, given these options, terrorists will obviously decide to only purchase a Certified Backdoored U.S. Cellphone™ for all their illegal activities, right!?
- pedalpete 11y ago
  Just playing Devil's Advocate Why would should your phone be treated as 'equally opaque and inaccessible' be any different to the belongings in your house? Your office? Your car? Digital representations are not 'thoughts', they are an encrypted form of a physical thing (by encrypted I don't mean technological encryption, but we can't read the 0s and 1s without a app to decipher). How would an undeveloped roll of film be treated in a similar case? Would the FBI just go 'oops, not developed yet, guess we can't see what is in there'. No, they'd develop the film, plain and simple. Just to be clear, I'm NOT suggesting we create back doors, but I don't see any physical object containing data to be the equivelant of what is in our minds. More troubling, what happens when we create mind-readers? That's where things get really edgy.
  - makecheck 11y ago
    Undeveloped film doesn’t meet the definition of inaccessible if it’s sitting on a desk in your house. It would have to be a roll of film that was buried under a million tons of concrete — you may know exactly where it is and suspect that its contents could be useful, yet you also know that it’s effectively gone and there’s no way it’s ever going to be retrieved. Encrypted devices have to be treated like they’re buried forever.
mtgx 11y ago
I think people are also missing the point when they say "newer iPhones wouldn't be affected by this anyway". I think what's more likely to happen is that in a future case, the FBI will tell the judge that Apple has already complied with such a request before, and now "suddenly" it doesn't want to anymore. Then the judge will probably agree with the FBI that Apple is in the wrong here, and tell Apple "hey, do that thing you did with the previous iPhones, too". And what that will mean is that Apple will have to make it so the Secure Enclave can be tampered with. That would affect all devices, because Apple would have to cripple every single device like that if it wants to be able to comply with all future orders, and you can also say bye-bye to secure storage of fingerprint data and credit card data on iPhones. It's all about the precedent here and it's an extremely dangerous one. As Apple said, too, if the FBI succeeds in getting Apple to push malicious updates to their users, who knows what kind of other similar requests will come from the FBI - not just to decrypt local storage, but also to break end-to-end encryption for communications and so on. FBI's fight is literally a fight against good security.

29 points by davidbarker 11y ago

I don’t think Apple will lose. First, there is an obvious pre-technology version of this problem: I have some information in my brain, and only in my brain, that I refuse to tell you. You are unable to pursuade me to cough it up. Therefore, you never get the information. The FBI should be forced to treat an encrypted phone as being equally opaque and inaccessible. You can see the phone, you suspect it contains something you want, you can’t get it. You can see my head, you suspect it contains something you want, you can’t get it. Besides, Apple has the money to fight forever in legal proceedings (shouldn’t be hard...seems the FBI had to drag out an 18th-century clause to even make the request; it should only become more comical from here on out). Also, phones are sold everywhere in the world. You don’t even need a phone to be a “phone” because anything with WiFi access can effectively communicate; it doesn’t matter if the device was purchased domestically or even has the ability to connect to cellular networks. So yeah, given these options, terrorists will obviously decide to only purchase a Certified Backdoored U.S. Cellphone™ for all their illegal activities, right!?

pedalpete 11y ago
Just playing Devil's Advocate Why would should your phone be treated as 'equally opaque and inaccessible' be any different to the belongings in your house? Your office? Your car? Digital representations are not 'thoughts', they are an encrypted form of a physical thing (by encrypted I don't mean technological encryption, but we can't read the 0s and 1s without a app to decipher). How would an undeveloped roll of film be treated in a similar case? Would the FBI just go 'oops, not developed yet, guess we can't see what is in there'. No, they'd develop the film, plain and simple. Just to be clear, I'm NOT suggesting we create back doors, but I don't see any physical object containing data to be the equivelant of what is in our minds. More troubling, what happens when we create mind-readers? That's where things get really edgy.
- makecheck 11y ago
  Undeveloped film doesn’t meet the definition of inaccessible if it’s sitting on a desk in your house. It would have to be a roll of film that was buried under a million tons of concrete — you may know exactly where it is and suspect that its contents could be useful, yet you also know that it’s effectively gone and there’s no way it’s ever going to be retrieved. Encrypted devices have to be treated like they’re buried forever.

mtgx 11y ago

I think people are also missing the point when they say "newer iPhones wouldn't be affected by this anyway". I think what's more likely to happen is that in a future case, the FBI will tell the judge that Apple has already complied with such a request before, and now "suddenly" it doesn't want to anymore. Then the judge will probably agree with the FBI that Apple is in the wrong here, and tell Apple "hey, do that thing you did with the previous iPhones, too". And what that will mean is that Apple will have to make it so the Secure Enclave can be tampered with. That would affect all devices, because Apple would have to cripple every single device like that if it wants to be able to comply with all future orders, and you can also say bye-bye to secure storage of fingerprint data and credit card data on iPhones. It's all about the precedent here and it's an extremely dangerous one. As Apple said, too, if the FBI succeeds in getting Apple to push malicious updates to their users, who knows what kind of other similar requests will come from the FBI - not just to decrypt local storage, but also to break end-to-end encryption for communications and so on. FBI's fight is literally a fight against good security.