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This argument makes no sense. There's no legal right to be free from court-approved government surveillance. The government has always had the authority to co

This argument makes no sense. There's no legal right to be free from court-approved government surveillance. The government has always had the authority to compel the cooperation of third-parties in search and seizure cases. This is an awesome power, which is why you need to convince a judge to issue a court order to use it. The only way that we ever thought encryption could thwart surveillance is by raising technological barriers. This was Apple's whole argument in the first place! "We can't help the government hack into your iPhone because it's impossible for us to do it ourselves". Turns out that they were wrong; the government did find a way to hack into it given Apple's secrets (their code-signing key). Now Apple is bending over backwards to try to make it sound like their original argument still applies, when in fact they're making a totally different argument from what I'm going to call "encryptyness", like Colbert's "truthiness". It goes like this: "we tried really hard to protect this technology from our own capabilities, and we convinced our customers that we did, even though it's now clear that we didn't; it would hurt us to be seen helping the government in contradiction of our previous claims, so the government should pretend that we can't help them. They shouldn't be able to get court orders for anything that's encrypty enough." Or even more legally laughable, that the government shouldn't have search and seizure authority period. The other arguments in support of Apple also have no legal merit. My favorite is the slippery slope argument, that if the government gets a taste of this power that they'll come back for more and use it on everyone's phone. Judges are fully capable of distinguishing between different circumstances. This case is decided on the merits of this case. Tomorrow's case is decided on the merits of tomorrow's case. This is a fundamental principle of common law. The government's not asking Apple to create a backdoor for them. The door already exists and Apple created it for itself, when they didn't include Apple as a potential adversary in their threat model (which is contrary to their public claims). They could very well design their phones to not have this vulnerability, but it would require a more sophisticated approach. Apple wants the benefits of owning 'your' phone, and the benefits of not having any power over it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

mcphage 11y ago
> Judges are fully capable of distinguishing before different circumstances. This case is decided on the merits of this case. Tomorrow's case is decided on the merits of tomorrow's case. The US legal system is heavily based on following precedent.
- deleted 11y ago
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- marcoperaza 11y ago
  Precedent applies when you have facts that are fundamentally equivalent. Forcing Apple to hack a particular phone is totally different from forcing them to ship phones with backdoors.
  - mcphage 11y ago
    So when the fact is the government has another phone they want decrypted, and the precedent is that if you lean hard on Apple, they will make it easy to brute force, then the result will be another phone unlocked. And another. And another. And then they'll start leaning for something harder. If you think that this has a chance in hell of being an isolated case, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      > So when the fact is the government has another phone they want decrypted, and the precedent is that if you lean hard on Apple, they will make it easy to brute force, then the result will be another phone unlocked. And what's wrong with that? If they get warrants for each phone.
cmurf 11y ago
Putting up walls in the form of code signing, TPMs, rate limiters, password hash functions designed to slow down iterative guessing, aren't vulnerabilities in waiting. The government changing the rules by claiming they're entitled to coerce a company to code changes causing these walls to be removed, does not make them pre-existing vulnerabilities. If the Court rules Apple can be compelled to do the work to create significantly weaker software, and then authenticate it with their signing key, it's pretty reasonable Apple will look for ways to further hard code these walls into the hardware. It's not just in their marketing interest, although that's a factor, it's to get themselves completely out of the business of even having these arguments almost every time they come up, when governments around the world say "gimme!" with a court order. If they refine this so they really can't comply, even by hacking their own products, then the only thing governments have left is to destroy the company. If they go down that road, we have much bigger problems.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  >Putting up walls in the form of code signing, TPMs, rate limiters, password hash functions designed to slow down iterative guessing, aren't vulnerabilities in waiting. It's all about threat models. If you're trying to protect your data from the government, anything that allows anyone but you to access the data is a vulnerability. Very few systems try to contend with such a threat model because it's really hard to defend against, and most people don't care about keeping their data from the government. Seamless updates are way more important to them.

mcphage 11y ago

> Judges are fully capable of distinguishing before different circumstances. This case is decided on the merits of this case. Tomorrow's case is decided on the merits of tomorrow's case. The US legal system is heavily based on following precedent.

deleted 11y ago
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marcoperaza 11y ago
Precedent applies when you have facts that are fundamentally equivalent. Forcing Apple to hack a particular phone is totally different from forcing them to ship phones with backdoors.
- mcphage 11y ago
  So when the fact is the government has another phone they want decrypted, and the precedent is that if you lean hard on Apple, they will make it easy to brute force, then the result will be another phone unlocked. And another. And another. And then they'll start leaning for something harder. If you think that this has a chance in hell of being an isolated case, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    > So when the fact is the government has another phone they want decrypted, and the precedent is that if you lean hard on Apple, they will make it easy to brute force, then the result will be another phone unlocked. And what's wrong with that? If they get warrants for each phone.

cmurf 11y ago

Putting up walls in the form of code signing, TPMs, rate limiters, password hash functions designed to slow down iterative guessing, aren't vulnerabilities in waiting. The government changing the rules by claiming they're entitled to coerce a company to code changes causing these walls to be removed, does not make them pre-existing vulnerabilities. If the Court rules Apple can be compelled to do the work to create significantly weaker software, and then authenticate it with their signing key, it's pretty reasonable Apple will look for ways to further hard code these walls into the hardware. It's not just in their marketing interest, although that's a factor, it's to get themselves completely out of the business of even having these arguments almost every time they come up, when governments around the world say "gimme!" with a court order. If they refine this so they really can't comply, even by hacking their own products, then the only thing governments have left is to destroy the company. If they go down that road, we have much bigger problems.

marcoperaza 11y ago
>Putting up walls in the form of code signing, TPMs, rate limiters, password hash functions designed to slow down iterative guessing, aren't vulnerabilities in waiting. It's all about threat models. If you're trying to protect your data from the government, anything that allows anyone but you to access the data is a vulnerability. Very few systems try to contend with such a threat model because it's really hard to defend against, and most people don't care about keeping their data from the government. Seamless updates are way more important to them.