11 ms·

FBI Director Comments on San Bernardino Matter

109 points by robbiemitchell 11y ago

ryanlol 11y ago
>The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice. This is a big fat lie. The way US legal system works makes any case like this about setting a precedent, be it intentional or not. The fact that the FBI director goes and straight up lies about this just supports the theory that it may very well be intentional.
- mirkules 11y ago
  I don't believe this is tied to the San Bernardino case. The topic of weakening encryption has been brewing for the past 6-12 months, and the FBI is using the SB case as a convenient hammer to put a nail in the coffin of encryption. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/28/the-fbi-used-to-recommend-encryption-now-they-want-to-ban-it http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/28/the-fbi... http://www.dailydot.com/politics/second-crypto-war-hearing-washington/ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/second-crypto-war-hearing-w... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-has-no-idea-how-to-solve-its-encryption-problem http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-has-no-idea-how-to-... These were all about a year ago.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    >I don't believe this is tied to the San Bernardino case. The topic of weakening encryption has been brewing for the past 6-12 months, and the FBI is using the SB case as a convenient hammer to put a nail in the coffin of encryption. This is about much more than just weakening encryption. I think Congressman Lieu put it well >This FBI court order, by compelling a private sector company to write new software, is essentially making that company an arm of law-enforcement. Private sector companies are not—and should not be—an arm of government or law enforcement.
autoreleasepool 11y ago
In other words, they're sticking to their story. No mention of the iCloud password reset either.
- maratd 11y ago
  > No mention of the iCloud password reset either. Exactly. How can you not address that? They necessitated this whole mess through their actions. I try not to ascribe malice to what can easily be explained through incompetence, but to not even mention it? Shameful.
  - beedogs 11y ago
    Honestly, I'm ascribing it to malice.
25cf 11y ago
These people are either being intentionally deceitful or are simply incompetent in understanding the full implications of what they're asking. Either possibility is disturbing.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  I think the amount of unnecessary emotional appeals makes it fairly clear that they're being intentionally deceitful.
  - dclowd9901 11y ago
    Any time an American official or politician says the word "terrorist", my mind simply shuts off. I know ever subsequent word will be rhetorical nonsense and bluster. That's pretty sad.
- sneak 11y ago
  Despite the obvious application of Hanlon's razor, the latter is simply not plausible. The release statement opens with a stone cold lie. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152368902201344 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115236890220134... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152640613351424 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115264061335142... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152961054040069 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115296105404006... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701158607019184128 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115860701918412... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701158919129927682 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115891912992768...
  - studentrob 11y ago
    So they know this leads to an Orwellian state and they do not care? Maybe, but it would be political suicide to admit that. Certainly Comey is being deceitful in his first sentence. Even Hillary called for a Manhattan-like project to circumvent encryption back in December [1]. That shows it's something that's being discussed in Washington quite frequently. I doubt any will ever admit they're trying to lead us towards an Orwellian state. Also, encryption is part of our protection from that. Heads of state and encryption currently appear to be directly at odds. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-transcript-clinton-sanders-omalley-in-new-hampshire/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-transcript-cli...
bradleyjg 11y ago
It should be resolved by the American people deciding how we want to govern ourselves in a world we have never seen before. We shouldn’t drift to a place—or be pushed to a place by the loudest voices—because finding the right place, the right balance, will matter to every American for a very long time. So why are they asking the courts to stretch the 1789 All Writs Act beyond its breaking point, instead of going to Congress for a new law? The magistrate that signed off on this isn't even an Article III judge.
- wyldfire 11y ago
  > ... instead of going to Congress for a new law I hate to be in the position of defending the FBI, but this new law would be irrelevant if it's ex post facto, yeah?
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    No. The ex post facto clause of the constitution only forbids certain types of retroactive criminal laws. See Calder v. Bull for the details.
- mhays 11y ago
  Except he did go to Congress, and came back with nothing, forcing him to use the AWA. So who is pushing who exactly? And who has a louder voice in criminal justice matters than the FBI?
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    Hadn't thought about it this way before, but he might be turning to the AWA because a reasonable piece of legislation can't make it through congress.
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      Reasonable according to whom? And Congress passed a ton of stuff last year, it's not like it is totally deadlocked. The FBI would love a federal law that forces Apple to crack phones for them. Since they don't have one, they are trying to get a court to invent one by stretching the All Writs Act.
deleted 11y ago
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noobermin 11y ago
I'll go ahead and say that it sounds extremely sincere and straight-forward, much unlike most official statements I've seen from the FBI. He does suggest that his view is right, but he does the right thing, as apple did, in supporting a public discourse about the so-called balance between privacy and safety. I know many people seem to gravitate to the extremes on every issue, but both Cook and Comey are right in saying that we as a nation need to question our fundamental assumptions in our thinking and think through what the would be the best balance between the two, if there be any. As Comey says, and I personally agree with this, the "balance" shouldn't be decided "by corporations that sell stuff for a living" or by "the FBI which investigates for a living,"...or in general, the government. We shouldn't be grass in a fight between two elephants. The American people need to decide how much involvement both government and large multinational corporations have in their lives. That's what this all comes down to, after all.
- thetruthseeker1 11y ago
  Sounds extremely straight forward and sincere(many bad decisions are also taken with utmost sincerity) but I would think it would be a bad idea to provide FBI this ability. For one, it is forever weakening the security and privacy of your iphone. Bad guys who want to evade the policy officers will do it anyway with encryption systems/software available from any of the non US territories. Considering that FBI can get significant meta data from telecom providers(who called whom etc), I think this requirement that FBI has gives little gain in security as the upside and comes with a significant downside[ huge loss in privacy].
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight-isn-t-about-encryption http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight... argues and I agree that the loss of freedom is precisely when you can't install your own software onto a phone in your possession.
    - 05 11y ago
      The article author is incompetent, it's all about private keys, not 'source code'. Neither Android OEMs nor Apple allows the user to set their own root cert.
dclowd9901 11y ago
You don't get it, Comey. The problem isn't that you want this information. Obviously you want this information as an investigator of a crime. The problem is, we can't fucking trust you or anyone enough to cross that bridge, because we know if it's there, you're just going to want more. You and every law enforcement agent in the United States has lost our trust. Call it overreach, or overzealous prosecution, high incarceration rates, crooked judges sending kids to jail for kickbacks... fuck if I list any more, I'm going to want to drink some more. I'd love to live in a world where I trusted a government, which is supposed to be a composition of its people, more than a profit-motivated, self-interested business, but in some weird turn of events, something vastly different has festered in the last 15 years. You blew it, you asshole, you and every other cop.
- FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  A few things. If you want to make your argument legit, refrain from calling the other person names. Second, besides drinking and making yourself essentially useless, what are you doing to improve this situation. One person may not be enough to make a difference but its better than zero. America is entirely being driven by fear and anger. The current presidential race is a perfect reflection of the hate, anger, and fear that Americans believe exists. The system is a reflection of what the "good" people allow to happen. The FBI has a job, and Apple has a commitment to its customers. Technology is going to get more advanced, does that mean that we should let it be a tool to obstruct justice. You may not trust the people tasked with the investigation, but people should also look at the fact that the encryption here is obstructing justice. Tomorrow if a criminal kidnaps a bus of school children and the police are able to get a hold of a locked phone that holds their location, would you be as opposed to the current situation? The creation of a method to disable the phones encryption is a slippery road, but the option of not aiding the FBI is also a slippery road. This is a organization created to protect the people. We need to have a open discourse on how the information can be taken off this phone while minimizing the loss of public security and privacy . This is not a black and white issue like many people are treating it. And just to make it clear, I do agree that the government has done extremely questionable things as well as committed offenses against the publics privacy. We need to fix the issue of distrust, because a lack of trust in our system is equal to cancer within a body.
BWStearns 11y ago
I wonder if they did or what would have happened if they had approached Apple in a non-compulsory manner regarding this. He is right on the fact that the specific task they're seeking Apple to perform is more or less obsolete and will be entirely so shortly so I'm inclined to believe that they're not really going through all this to abuse that specific tool (though the precedent would be worth the fight in order to abuse it). It would be sad, but entirely his fault, if his prior efforts to set bad faith precedents to end-run consumer encryption alienated industry to the point where productive conversations are no longer possible.
- plorg 11y ago
  It seems that Apple got sick of servicing these requests, particularly as they started increasing in frequency. The NYTimes [0] reported earlier this week that Apple had been basically complying until last year, when they decided that they could no longer deal with the burden of evaluating the large amount of legal orders they were receiving and unlocking or retrieving data from phones. It seems unlikely, given their (new-ish) stance on privacy that they would comply with any request at this point. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-became-a-bulwark-for-digital-privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-be... Edit: I'm not trying to suggest that Apple is suddenly being arbitrarily obstreperous in cases where they may have once been compliant. Apple made a decision to change course and it wouldn't make any sense for them to go back on it just because the FBI asked "Pretty please?".
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    As far as I can tell Apple has never complied with a request for what the FBI is asking for here. It has complied in cases where the phone was not encrypted, or where a backup in iCloud could be made available to law enforcement, but Apple has never actually produced, signed and installed a custom "this phone only, and only so law enforcement can brute-force it" version of iOS. And given that we're talking about a federal government that was perfectly happy with pictures of the TSA's master luggage key being published in newspapers, I don't fault Apple one bit for being scared of handing over what are basically the keys to the kingdom.
tomschlick 11y ago
Didn't he and other FBI/DHS officials just get done testifying to congress for the need to backdoor encryption standards?! Yeah, sorry, but I don't think I'm gonna trust them even though they promise it will only be this one time.
symlinkk 11y ago
> We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. This directly contradicts Tim Cook's statement, in fact he used the same term "master key": > In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. It either is a master key or it isn't.
- exodust 11y ago
  It isn't a master key.
- rtpg 11y ago
  It isn't. the FBI asked for a specialised OS image that would have a check so that it could only work on this specific phone. Combined with Apple's encryption/signing of the update, this image could not be applied to any other device. So the "work" asked of Apple would produce something that would only work on the phone with the warrant
  - symlinkk 11y ago
    So Tim Cook was wrong? Look at what he wrote: "Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control."
    - tempestn 11y ago
      Can an analogy be "wrong"? It's certainly a stretch to call it a master key. I'd call it more of a bump key. :P But discussing the rightness or wrongness of an analogy is probably beside the point.
joolze 11y ago
"The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice." When the government revokes the Gulf of Tonkin resolution I will again put faith in its ability to act responsibly with emergency powers and provisions that might, just might set a precedence. Until then, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, fuck you.
imh 11y ago
> ...it does highlight that we have awesome new technology that creates a serious tension between two values we all treasure — privacy and safety. I hate this narrative so much. Just because we happen to be storing everything we do now, doesn't suddenly create tension between privacy and safety. We used to not store it at all! It's really just a question of keeping privacy with new tech.
- rando289 11y ago
  Yes, it's a false dichotomy. Either we have a police state, or the terrorists win, take your choice! Don't forget the children, and the .0001 % chance of horribly brutally muderdered by terrorists!
cmurf 11y ago
I don't like it, but I think we're better off if the courts side with FBI on this case, because it should accelerate the inevitable: either Apple and other mobile device makers give up on privacy and governments around the world get whatever they want, or they make zero knowledge devices that can't expose their data unless the user complies. In the meantime, FBI losing this case just means they try again. And again. And so will other governments, not just federal, but state and local. And foreign. The reality is Apple can change the software to in effect cause the data to become accessible. Apple doesn't have keys to the front door. But they have the power to weaken the hinges. Saying they won't do that isn't the same as it not being possible.
exodust 11y ago
There's a certain hypocrisy I'm noticing in these forum discussions whereby many of you are distrusting the FBI, but apparently you're fine with Apple having the best chance of cracking your phone. Everyone is going on about encryption, but notice it's not just encryption that protects us, but also vendor-controlled measures such as self-destruct. I prefer a level playing field in these matters. I don't want the FBI to have a better chance at cracking my phone than anyone else, but I also don't want Apple to have the best chance either. It's all or nothing. My vote is for strong encryption, but up until that point, everything else should be on the table for all parties such as crime investigators, not just exclusively controlled by tech giants.
- Russell91 11y ago
  The hypocrisy is only superficial. It seems at first thought that the government (being owned by the people) would be more trustworthy. But... Based on incentives, the government is incentivized to put as many people in jail as possible. Apple is incentivized to make people's phone/laptop experience as good as possible. Based on worst-case actions, Apple can use your data to 1) sell you more devices, 2) generally reduce your consumer purchasing power, or unlikely 3) sell/share your data and seriously compromise your privacy. The government, on the other hand, can throw you in jail, for life. Based on history (Germany, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, ...), governments have demonstrated real threats with user data in hand that corporations have never really come close to competing with.
  - exodust 11y ago
    Your idea that Apple are incentivized to make people's phone experience as good as possible sounds like a wishful proposition. There's plenty of examples of Apple features and restriction designed as eco-system lock-in, behavior manipulation, or control limiting for commercial reasons. "What's good for Apple is good for our customers" is what they want you to believe, but as a long time iOS device owner, I reject that on numerous grounds. There's also an equivalence flaw in your argument that sounds like it's coming straight from infowars.com: "the government is incentivized to put as many people in jail as possible". I'm with your on incentives though. And one thing Apple have no commercial interest or incentive for, is fighting crime. We don't live in Star Wars. There's more than dark vs light. My position doesn't mean I am not aware of western government corruption, bungling, even war crimes. But I am not permanently polarized, forever holding "the government" in contempt for misguided actions and evil intentions. On history... if we're talking tyrannical governments, then "protection of user data" I suggest would not have stopped any given government in your examples from unleashing hell on its people one way or another.
zmmmmm 11y ago
> Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. Interesting admission that they don't really have "probable cause" here, rather they apparently want to go on a fishing expedition. I guess if the owner of the phone is already established as a terrorist then that is cause enough, but I still would have expected them to be arguing they have specific reason to believe the phone is necessary for their investigation.
- gregd 11y ago
  The owner of the phone is San Bernadino County, which gave the FBI permission to search the phone. Pretty sure probable cause is a moot point when the owner of the phone grants you permission to search it.
  - zmmmmm 11y ago
    Absolutely. I just think it significantly weakens their argument to admit they don't even know if they phone data will be useful. I would have thought when they are going to court to compel a company to do something they would be asserting something more than "who knows, it might be useful?" in support of their case.
ilostmykeys 11y ago
Fuck da poh leece
jkelsey 11y ago
It's a real media posturing war going on right now. I wish Apple would win the argument on merits of the argument alone, but it's obvious with this the FBI thinks it can rely on the terrorism argument alone. Notice that Comey doesn't even bother to refute the technical and legal precedent arguments that Apple and other privacy advocates raise in the media. Google or Facebook have to get involved and put something on their homepages; else, I think that the FBI wins this.
pnwhyc 11y ago
I think it's reasonable to say that the HN crowd is predominantly more educated on this matter than the average American. We are not the target audience of this letter. Neither is Apple. Comey is playing on the emotions and technological ignorance of the bourgeois. He refers to brute force hacking as, "...try to guess the terrorist’s passcode..." Then he plays on Americans' current distaste for large corporations and says that the, "American people," need to decide whether this is right or wrong. No, we don't. Every cryptologist, cyber-security expert and halfway decent IT is saying that this is a catastrophic proposal with the power to mutilate the fourth amendment and send a whole Jenga tower of rights tumbling after it. It shouldn't even be a question. The FBI appears to be using this tragedy as a trojan horse by which to commit atrocities upon our crucial freedoms. No, our thoughts and prayers are not enough, but our privacy and security is far too much.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > We are not the target audience of this letter Maybe, but it's fun to discuss, and there are enough of us spread throughout that can educate on this single issue. It's pretty easy for me to explain to my non-tech friends the implications of what the FBI is asking. Word of mouth travels fast and I would give pro-encryption the upper hand in this "debate". I have not heard anyone outside government protesting that Apple yield on this issue and I doubt I will. In fact, the only ones who speak up against encryption are those who do not listen to the people. Since they're supposed to represent us, they will be very easy to not vote for. Like you said though, it isn't even a question, encryption is here to stay whether the American government permits it or not. Ironically, by putting up such a fight, the government is simply telling criminals where the weak points are in law enforcement, and are thus empowering criminals. I hope our government can have a good sit down with tech company leaders and experts in cryptology. Despite Comey's request to have an open discussion, they seem to be excluding this group. It's apparent from his discourse, Hillary's, and Obama's that they've spent no time sincerely listening to anyone with any knowledge about the benefits of encryption. The "conversation" he so desires has only happened in Washington among people with no tech background. Presumably there will be some public hearings coming up.
CodeWriter23 11y ago
> We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. Bull crap. The FBI has it within their power to break the encryption in less than a decade by spinning up tens of thousands of EC2 GPU instances. Forcing Apple to develop products that don't yet exists is simply a choice of economy, with the added benefit of being able to strongarm any other business into creating new products in the future if it suits the FBI.
- tzs 11y ago
  > Bull crap. The FBI has it within their power to break the encryption in less than a decade by spinning up tens of thousands of EC2 GPU instances. How? They either need to break the PIN or they need to break the AES256 key that is used to encrypt file metadata. They cannot use EC2 GPU instances to attack the PIN because the function that derives the AES key from the PIN uses a key that is unique to each phone and not readable by software so they cannot get a hold of it unless they resort to opening the crypto chip and trying to read the key by examining the hardware (and if they do that, they won't need a GPU...any desktop computer would be able to brute force the PIN quickly). They can use EC2 GPU instances to go after the AES256 key for metadata encryption, but that will take a hell of a lot longer than a decade.
  - deleted 11y ago
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    - tzs 11y ago
      AES256 has 115, 792, 089, 237, 316, 195, 423, 570, 985, 008, 687, 907, 853, 269, 984, 665, 640, 564, 039, 457, 584, 007, 913, 129, 639, 936 possible keys (I've put spaces after the commas to allow HN to wrap because HN can have trouble with long strings lacking whitespace). Suppose Amazon has some kind of super GPU that can try 1 trillion (10^12) keys per clock cycle, and rans at 1 THz (!0^12 Hz). Note that both of these far exceed any actual GPUs. Suppose Amazon has a trillion of these available and you use them all. To search that entire key space would take 3669308250866118434801967410403995 years. On average you only have to search half the key space, which cuts this 1834654125433059217400983705201998 years. Assuming that this computation can be done super efficiently...so efficiently that for each key tested only a single bit actually has to irreversibly change state, and that we are doing this in a system cooled by liquid helium, it would need a minimum amount of energy equal to the entire energy output of the Sun over 3.6x10^20 years. (I don't remember if that is worst case or average, so let's be generous and call it only 1.8x10^20 years worth of total solar energy output).
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studentrob 11y ago
Could Cook even compel his employees to write the desired operating system? If I worked there and was asked to violate/reverse the core of my company's principles, I would quit. Frankly, this type of order would deeply hurt moral at Apple. I imagine Cook knows that, and in addition to doing the right thing, he must double down on ensuring employee retention and future sale of products. End-to-end encryption is a feature many people buy the phone to get. If that disappeared, many techies would stop recommending it, and sales will slide. There's a lot on the table here. I don't even think you could measure the impact for reimbursement by the government. sigh, at least you CA folks elected Ted Lieu, good job!

109 points by robbiemitchell 11y ago

>The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice. This is a big fat lie. The way US legal system works makes any case like this about setting a precedent, be it intentional or not. The fact that the FBI director goes and straight up lies about this just supports the theory that it may very well be intentional.

mirkules 11y ago
I don't believe this is tied to the San Bernardino case. The topic of weakening encryption has been brewing for the past 6-12 months, and the FBI is using the SB case as a convenient hammer to put a nail in the coffin of encryption. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/28/the-fbi-used-to-recommend-encryption-now-they-want-to-ban-it http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/28/the-fbi... http://www.dailydot.com/politics/second-crypto-war-hearing-washington/ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/second-crypto-war-hearing-w... http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-has-no-idea-how-to-solve-its-encryption-problem http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbi-has-no-idea-how-to-... These were all about a year ago.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  >I don't believe this is tied to the San Bernardino case. The topic of weakening encryption has been brewing for the past 6-12 months, and the FBI is using the SB case as a convenient hammer to put a nail in the coffin of encryption. This is about much more than just weakening encryption. I think Congressman Lieu put it well >This FBI court order, by compelling a private sector company to write new software, is essentially making that company an arm of law-enforcement. Private sector companies are not—and should not be—an arm of government or law enforcement.

autoreleasepool 11y ago

In other words, they're sticking to their story. No mention of the iCloud password reset either.

maratd 11y ago
> No mention of the iCloud password reset either. Exactly. How can you not address that? They necessitated this whole mess through their actions. I try not to ascribe malice to what can easily be explained through incompetence, but to not even mention it? Shameful.
- beedogs 11y ago
  Honestly, I'm ascribing it to malice.

25cf 11y ago

These people are either being intentionally deceitful or are simply incompetent in understanding the full implications of what they're asking. Either possibility is disturbing.

ryanlol 11y ago
I think the amount of unnecessary emotional appeals makes it fairly clear that they're being intentionally deceitful.
- dclowd9901 11y ago
  Any time an American official or politician says the word "terrorist", my mind simply shuts off. I know ever subsequent word will be rhetorical nonsense and bluster. That's pretty sad.
sneak 11y ago
Despite the obvious application of Hanlon's razor, the latter is simply not plausible. The release statement opens with a stone cold lie. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152368902201344 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115236890220134... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152640613351424 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115264061335142... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701152961054040069 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115296105404006... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701158607019184128 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115860701918412... https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/701158919129927682 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/70115891912992768...
- studentrob 11y ago
  So they know this leads to an Orwellian state and they do not care? Maybe, but it would be political suicide to admit that. Certainly Comey is being deceitful in his first sentence. Even Hillary called for a Manhattan-like project to circumvent encryption back in December [1]. That shows it's something that's being discussed in Washington quite frequently. I doubt any will ever admit they're trying to lead us towards an Orwellian state. Also, encryption is part of our protection from that. Heads of state and encryption currently appear to be directly at odds. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-transcript-clinton-sanders-omalley-in-new-hampshire/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-transcript-cli...

bradleyjg 11y ago

It should be resolved by the American people deciding how we want to govern ourselves in a world we have never seen before. We shouldn’t drift to a place—or be pushed to a place by the loudest voices—because finding the right place, the right balance, will matter to every American for a very long time. So why are they asking the courts to stretch the 1789 All Writs Act beyond its breaking point, instead of going to Congress for a new law? The magistrate that signed off on this isn't even an Article III judge.

wyldfire 11y ago
> ... instead of going to Congress for a new law I hate to be in the position of defending the FBI, but this new law would be irrelevant if it's ex post facto, yeah?
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  No. The ex post facto clause of the constitution only forbids certain types of retroactive criminal laws. See Calder v. Bull for the details.
mhays 11y ago
Except he did go to Congress, and came back with nothing, forcing him to use the AWA. So who is pushing who exactly? And who has a louder voice in criminal justice matters than the FBI?
- BWStearns 11y ago
  Hadn't thought about it this way before, but he might be turning to the AWA because a reasonable piece of legislation can't make it through congress.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    Reasonable according to whom? And Congress passed a ton of stuff last year, it's not like it is totally deadlocked. The FBI would love a federal law that forces Apple to crack phones for them. Since they don't have one, they are trying to get a court to invent one by stretching the All Writs Act.

deleted 11y ago

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noobermin 11y ago

I'll go ahead and say that it sounds extremely sincere and straight-forward, much unlike most official statements I've seen from the FBI. He does suggest that his view is right, but he does the right thing, as apple did, in supporting a public discourse about the so-called balance between privacy and safety. I know many people seem to gravitate to the extremes on every issue, but both Cook and Comey are right in saying that we as a nation need to question our fundamental assumptions in our thinking and think through what the would be the best balance between the two, if there be any. As Comey says, and I personally agree with this, the "balance" shouldn't be decided "by corporations that sell stuff for a living" or by "the FBI which investigates for a living,"...or in general, the government. We shouldn't be grass in a fight between two elephants. The American people need to decide how much involvement both government and large multinational corporations have in their lives. That's what this all comes down to, after all.

thetruthseeker1 11y ago
Sounds extremely straight forward and sincere(many bad decisions are also taken with utmost sincerity) but I would think it would be a bad idea to provide FBI this ability. For one, it is forever weakening the security and privacy of your iphone. Bad guys who want to evade the policy officers will do it anyway with encryption systems/software available from any of the non US territories. Considering that FBI can get significant meta data from telecom providers(who called whom etc), I think this requirement that FBI has gives little gain in security as the upside and comes with a significant downside[ huge loss in privacy].
- ikeboy 11y ago
  http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight-isn-t-about-encryption http://bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-17/the-apple-fight... argues and I agree that the loss of freedom is precisely when you can't install your own software onto a phone in your possession.
  - 05 11y ago
    The article author is incompetent, it's all about private keys, not 'source code'. Neither Android OEMs nor Apple allows the user to set their own root cert.

dclowd9901 11y ago

You don't get it, Comey. The problem isn't that you want this information. Obviously you want this information as an investigator of a crime. The problem is, we can't fucking trust you or anyone enough to cross that bridge, because we know if it's there, you're just going to want more. You and every law enforcement agent in the United States has lost our trust. Call it overreach, or overzealous prosecution, high incarceration rates, crooked judges sending kids to jail for kickbacks... fuck if I list any more, I'm going to want to drink some more. I'd love to live in a world where I trusted a government, which is supposed to be a composition of its people, more than a profit-motivated, self-interested business, but in some weird turn of events, something vastly different has festered in the last 15 years. You blew it, you asshole, you and every other cop.

FreedomToCreate 11y ago
A few things. If you want to make your argument legit, refrain from calling the other person names. Second, besides drinking and making yourself essentially useless, what are you doing to improve this situation. One person may not be enough to make a difference but its better than zero. America is entirely being driven by fear and anger. The current presidential race is a perfect reflection of the hate, anger, and fear that Americans believe exists. The system is a reflection of what the "good" people allow to happen. The FBI has a job, and Apple has a commitment to its customers. Technology is going to get more advanced, does that mean that we should let it be a tool to obstruct justice. You may not trust the people tasked with the investigation, but people should also look at the fact that the encryption here is obstructing justice. Tomorrow if a criminal kidnaps a bus of school children and the police are able to get a hold of a locked phone that holds their location, would you be as opposed to the current situation? The creation of a method to disable the phones encryption is a slippery road, but the option of not aiding the FBI is also a slippery road. This is a organization created to protect the people. We need to have a open discourse on how the information can be taken off this phone while minimizing the loss of public security and privacy . This is not a black and white issue like many people are treating it. And just to make it clear, I do agree that the government has done extremely questionable things as well as committed offenses against the publics privacy. We need to fix the issue of distrust, because a lack of trust in our system is equal to cancer within a body.

BWStearns 11y ago

I wonder if they did or what would have happened if they had approached Apple in a non-compulsory manner regarding this. He is right on the fact that the specific task they're seeking Apple to perform is more or less obsolete and will be entirely so shortly so I'm inclined to believe that they're not really going through all this to abuse that specific tool (though the precedent would be worth the fight in order to abuse it). It would be sad, but entirely his fault, if his prior efforts to set bad faith precedents to end-run consumer encryption alienated industry to the point where productive conversations are no longer possible.

plorg 11y ago
It seems that Apple got sick of servicing these requests, particularly as they started increasing in frequency. The NYTimes [0] reported earlier this week that Apple had been basically complying until last year, when they decided that they could no longer deal with the burden of evaluating the large amount of legal orders they were receiving and unlocking or retrieving data from phones. It seems unlikely, given their (new-ish) stance on privacy that they would comply with any request at this point. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-became-a-bulwark-for-digital-privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-be... Edit: I'm not trying to suggest that Apple is suddenly being arbitrarily obstreperous in cases where they may have once been compliant. Apple made a decision to change course and it wouldn't make any sense for them to go back on it just because the FBI asked "Pretty please?".
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  As far as I can tell Apple has never complied with a request for what the FBI is asking for here. It has complied in cases where the phone was not encrypted, or where a backup in iCloud could be made available to law enforcement, but Apple has never actually produced, signed and installed a custom "this phone only, and only so law enforcement can brute-force it" version of iOS. And given that we're talking about a federal government that was perfectly happy with pictures of the TSA's master luggage key being published in newspapers, I don't fault Apple one bit for being scared of handing over what are basically the keys to the kingdom.

tomschlick 11y ago

Didn't he and other FBI/DHS officials just get done testifying to congress for the need to backdoor encryption standards?! Yeah, sorry, but I don't think I'm gonna trust them even though they promise it will only be this one time.

symlinkk 11y ago

> We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. This directly contradicts Tim Cook's statement, in fact he used the same term "master key": > In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. It either is a master key or it isn't.

exodust 11y ago
It isn't a master key.
rtpg 11y ago
It isn't. the FBI asked for a specialised OS image that would have a check so that it could only work on this specific phone. Combined with Apple's encryption/signing of the update, this image could not be applied to any other device. So the "work" asked of Apple would produce something that would only work on the phone with the warrant
- symlinkk 11y ago
  So Tim Cook was wrong? Look at what he wrote: "Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control."
  - tempestn 11y ago
    Can an analogy be "wrong"? It's certainly a stretch to call it a master key. I'd call it more of a bump key. :P But discussing the rightness or wrongness of an analogy is probably beside the point.

joolze 11y ago

"The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice." When the government revokes the Gulf of Tonkin resolution I will again put faith in its ability to act responsibly with emergency powers and provisions that might, just might set a precedence. Until then, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, fuck you.

imh 11y ago

> ...it does highlight that we have awesome new technology that creates a serious tension between two values we all treasure — privacy and safety. I hate this narrative so much. Just because we happen to be storing everything we do now, doesn't suddenly create tension between privacy and safety. We used to not store it at all! It's really just a question of keeping privacy with new tech.

rando289 11y ago
Yes, it's a false dichotomy. Either we have a police state, or the terrorists win, take your choice! Don't forget the children, and the .0001 % chance of horribly brutally muderdered by terrorists!

cmurf 11y ago

I don't like it, but I think we're better off if the courts side with FBI on this case, because it should accelerate the inevitable: either Apple and other mobile device makers give up on privacy and governments around the world get whatever they want, or they make zero knowledge devices that can't expose their data unless the user complies. In the meantime, FBI losing this case just means they try again. And again. And so will other governments, not just federal, but state and local. And foreign. The reality is Apple can change the software to in effect cause the data to become accessible. Apple doesn't have keys to the front door. But they have the power to weaken the hinges. Saying they won't do that isn't the same as it not being possible.

exodust 11y ago

There's a certain hypocrisy I'm noticing in these forum discussions whereby many of you are distrusting the FBI, but apparently you're fine with Apple having the best chance of cracking your phone. Everyone is going on about encryption, but notice it's not just encryption that protects us, but also vendor-controlled measures such as self-destruct. I prefer a level playing field in these matters. I don't want the FBI to have a better chance at cracking my phone than anyone else, but I also don't want Apple to have the best chance either. It's all or nothing. My vote is for strong encryption, but up until that point, everything else should be on the table for all parties such as crime investigators, not just exclusively controlled by tech giants.

Russell91 11y ago
The hypocrisy is only superficial. It seems at first thought that the government (being owned by the people) would be more trustworthy. But... Based on incentives, the government is incentivized to put as many people in jail as possible. Apple is incentivized to make people's phone/laptop experience as good as possible. Based on worst-case actions, Apple can use your data to 1) sell you more devices, 2) generally reduce your consumer purchasing power, or unlikely 3) sell/share your data and seriously compromise your privacy. The government, on the other hand, can throw you in jail, for life. Based on history (Germany, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, ...), governments have demonstrated real threats with user data in hand that corporations have never really come close to competing with.
- exodust 11y ago
  Your idea that Apple are incentivized to make people's phone experience as good as possible sounds like a wishful proposition. There's plenty of examples of Apple features and restriction designed as eco-system lock-in, behavior manipulation, or control limiting for commercial reasons. "What's good for Apple is good for our customers" is what they want you to believe, but as a long time iOS device owner, I reject that on numerous grounds. There's also an equivalence flaw in your argument that sounds like it's coming straight from infowars.com: "the government is incentivized to put as many people in jail as possible". I'm with your on incentives though. And one thing Apple have no commercial interest or incentive for, is fighting crime. We don't live in Star Wars. There's more than dark vs light. My position doesn't mean I am not aware of western government corruption, bungling, even war crimes. But I am not permanently polarized, forever holding "the government" in contempt for misguided actions and evil intentions. On history... if we're talking tyrannical governments, then "protection of user data" I suggest would not have stopped any given government in your examples from unleashing hell on its people one way or another.

zmmmmm 11y ago

> Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. Interesting admission that they don't really have "probable cause" here, rather they apparently want to go on a fishing expedition. I guess if the owner of the phone is already established as a terrorist then that is cause enough, but I still would have expected them to be arguing they have specific reason to believe the phone is necessary for their investigation.

gregd 11y ago
The owner of the phone is San Bernadino County, which gave the FBI permission to search the phone. Pretty sure probable cause is a moot point when the owner of the phone grants you permission to search it.
- zmmmmm 11y ago
  Absolutely. I just think it significantly weakens their argument to admit they don't even know if they phone data will be useful. I would have thought when they are going to court to compel a company to do something they would be asserting something more than "who knows, it might be useful?" in support of their case.

ilostmykeys 11y ago

Fuck da poh leece

jkelsey 11y ago

It's a real media posturing war going on right now. I wish Apple would win the argument on merits of the argument alone, but it's obvious with this the FBI thinks it can rely on the terrorism argument alone. Notice that Comey doesn't even bother to refute the technical and legal precedent arguments that Apple and other privacy advocates raise in the media. Google or Facebook have to get involved and put something on their homepages; else, I think that the FBI wins this.

pnwhyc 11y ago

I think it's reasonable to say that the HN crowd is predominantly more educated on this matter than the average American. We are not the target audience of this letter. Neither is Apple. Comey is playing on the emotions and technological ignorance of the bourgeois. He refers to brute force hacking as, "...try to guess the terrorist’s passcode..." Then he plays on Americans' current distaste for large corporations and says that the, "American people," need to decide whether this is right or wrong. No, we don't. Every cryptologist, cyber-security expert and halfway decent IT is saying that this is a catastrophic proposal with the power to mutilate the fourth amendment and send a whole Jenga tower of rights tumbling after it. It shouldn't even be a question. The FBI appears to be using this tragedy as a trojan horse by which to commit atrocities upon our crucial freedoms. No, our thoughts and prayers are not enough, but our privacy and security is far too much.

studentrob 11y ago
> We are not the target audience of this letter Maybe, but it's fun to discuss, and there are enough of us spread throughout that can educate on this single issue. It's pretty easy for me to explain to my non-tech friends the implications of what the FBI is asking. Word of mouth travels fast and I would give pro-encryption the upper hand in this "debate". I have not heard anyone outside government protesting that Apple yield on this issue and I doubt I will. In fact, the only ones who speak up against encryption are those who do not listen to the people. Since they're supposed to represent us, they will be very easy to not vote for. Like you said though, it isn't even a question, encryption is here to stay whether the American government permits it or not. Ironically, by putting up such a fight, the government is simply telling criminals where the weak points are in law enforcement, and are thus empowering criminals. I hope our government can have a good sit down with tech company leaders and experts in cryptology. Despite Comey's request to have an open discussion, they seem to be excluding this group. It's apparent from his discourse, Hillary's, and Obama's that they've spent no time sincerely listening to anyone with any knowledge about the benefits of encryption. The "conversation" he so desires has only happened in Washington among people with no tech background. Presumably there will be some public hearings coming up.

CodeWriter23 11y ago

> We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. Bull crap. The FBI has it within their power to break the encryption in less than a decade by spinning up tens of thousands of EC2 GPU instances. Forcing Apple to develop products that don't yet exists is simply a choice of economy, with the added benefit of being able to strongarm any other business into creating new products in the future if it suits the FBI.

tzs 11y ago
> Bull crap. The FBI has it within their power to break the encryption in less than a decade by spinning up tens of thousands of EC2 GPU instances. How? They either need to break the PIN or they need to break the AES256 key that is used to encrypt file metadata. They cannot use EC2 GPU instances to attack the PIN because the function that derives the AES key from the PIN uses a key that is unique to each phone and not readable by software so they cannot get a hold of it unless they resort to opening the crypto chip and trying to read the key by examining the hardware (and if they do that, they won't need a GPU...any desktop computer would be able to brute force the PIN quickly). They can use EC2 GPU instances to go after the AES256 key for metadata encryption, but that will take a hell of a lot longer than a decade.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - tzs 11y ago
    AES256 has 115, 792, 089, 237, 316, 195, 423, 570, 985, 008, 687, 907, 853, 269, 984, 665, 640, 564, 039, 457, 584, 007, 913, 129, 639, 936 possible keys (I've put spaces after the commas to allow HN to wrap because HN can have trouble with long strings lacking whitespace). Suppose Amazon has some kind of super GPU that can try 1 trillion (10^12) keys per clock cycle, and rans at 1 THz (!0^12 Hz). Note that both of these far exceed any actual GPUs. Suppose Amazon has a trillion of these available and you use them all. To search that entire key space would take 3669308250866118434801967410403995 years. On average you only have to search half the key space, which cuts this 1834654125433059217400983705201998 years. Assuming that this computation can be done super efficiently...so efficiently that for each key tested only a single bit actually has to irreversibly change state, and that we are doing this in a system cooled by liquid helium, it would need a minimum amount of energy equal to the entire energy output of the Sun over 3.6x10^20 years. (I don't remember if that is worst case or average, so let's be generous and call it only 1.8x10^20 years worth of total solar energy output).

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studentrob 11y ago

Could Cook even compel his employees to write the desired operating system? If I worked there and was asked to violate/reverse the core of my company's principles, I would quit. Frankly, this type of order would deeply hurt moral at Apple. I imagine Cook knows that, and in addition to doing the right thing, he must double down on ensuring employee retention and future sale of products. End-to-end encryption is a feature many people buy the phone to get. If that disappeared, many techies would stop recommending it, and sales will slide. There's a lot on the table here. I don't even think you could measure the impact for reimbursement by the government. sigh, at least you CA folks elected Ted Lieu, good job!