10 ms·

The Encryption Meltdown

156 points by chmaynard 11y ago

iancarroll 11y ago
The FBI (very briefly) responded at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbi-is-trying-to-crack-the-san-bernardino-case-not-set-a-precedent-1458765774 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbi-is-trying-to-crack-the-s....
- Sacho 11y ago
  Their argumentation is ridiculous. The litigation cost Apple money, and could have had devastating effects they are all too aware of if a precedent was set. Their argument is basically "Carpet bombing is good because in the process of wiping out civilians we managed to kill a terrorist". There's a myriad of other ways they could have "stimulated creative people"(for example, by bloody paying them to do it instead of paying lawyers). That is why I continue to think the FBI's litigation was malicious - out of a myriad of approaches, they decided to pick the one with the worst possible outcome for cryptographic security and tech companies like Apple.
- dcw303 11y ago
  Nobody buys the Fed's story. It's clear that it was never about a specific phone and only about setting a precedent. Which is all well and good, but it begs the question why did they back out now? Public opinion was divided from the start, and it didn't change dramatically from when the story broke to when they dropped the case. They got a lot of mainstream media exposure, but I would have thought that would have been expected at the least (and probably desired). It's been reported that the other three letter agencies don't share the same view. Did Comey get too much unwanted heat? Is it just a temporary retreat to regroup and fight again another day? Something else? I can't believe that they just expected Apple to roll over.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    > why did they back out now? We'll never know. Doesn't matter anyway. If Comey or Lynch is to be fired or forced to resign, then this situation will never be discussed. They'll never admit that they did not do their own due diligence. Lawyers argue their own side and that's it. Lynch and Comey are professionals at this. They only look dumb in this case because they don't know anything about technology. I firmly believe this is true. There's absolutely no value to the US government to seek to weaken Apple's product. Other free forms of encryption exist. If the lawyers really understood that they would never have bothered with the case. Even if the government got Apple's cooperation, there would be so much news about this that even more people would learn how to use encrypted messaging tools. It wouldn't help us defeat terrorists in the slightest and it'd cripple a major US company's primary product. The problem is there are only a few people in the White House and Congress with strong enough voices who understand technology. You have to be a maker of technology to understand this stuff. If you haven't tried to do that and have only ever been a user, there's a good chance you'll never understand it. I remember thinking if I set up WordPress or Drupal for my clients and taught them a little then they will learn to manage their own websites. Nope. In many cases, the older crowd still wanted me to make minor edits that could be done through the web interface. I'm sure you all have experienced the same. So, I think all the time and money was wasted on this because we still have people like Feinstein, who hates everything tech that she can't control, in office. We don't have enough Ted Lieu's. Amazing that CA produced these two opposing characters. Also, the CTO's primary concern is getting more women involved in computer science. She's made no comment on the encryption topic. Obama claims that he understands tech since he created a digital services team, but that's clearly false. Government needs an upgrade and we can only do that with our voices and votes.
  - eps 11y ago
    > why did they back out now? Because it's a part of an orchestrated campaign to try and restore international trust in the US companies? Their credibility was decimated by Snowden revelations. This includes Apple who jumped into the bed with NSA as soon as Jobs was out of the way. So Feds cook up a case to challenge Apple on something crypto, scream their lungs out how they can't get in, but then bail out on technicality. The net effect - everyone now thinks Apple is a bastion of privacy and iPhones are Fort Knoxes of quality encryption. What will come next is another case with a major telco vendor (cisco, juniper, etc) that will work to the same effect. Just grab your popcorn and see.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
      You're probably correct, in my opinion. Don't forget the bit where they (Apple) have been issued an NSL, so while the public is distracted by the smoke and mirrors the G-men get what they want.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Apple even said they’d have complied if the FBI had asked secretly – not publicly – like the last 27 times.
        kabdib 11y ago
        When did Apple say that?
        macintux 11y ago
        As best as I recall, in that paragraph they did not say they would comply, just that they would make every effort to assist. I believe the subtlety was lost on those who want to believe Apple is being hypocritical.
        kuschku 11y ago
        The difference is still the same: Apple isn’t resisting out of good faith, but because they don’t want to risk a public precedence case.
  - taneq 11y ago
    > Which is all well and good, but it begs the question why did they back out now? Tinfoil answer: Because one of your secret courts ruled in their favour in a way that allowed Apple to save face in public?
rz2k 11y ago
>The Justice Department and FBI insist the encryption debate is critical to national security, and they’re right. The problem is that—amid another terror attack in the West—they continue to supply more reasons to doubt their credibility and even basic competence. Which way is this about to go? Does this justify more funding and more legal power? >Instead, Justice rushed to legal war with dubious theories. As it escalated its rhetoric, it even threatened to confiscate Apple’s source code and electronic signature: “The government did not seek to compel Apple to turn those over because it believed such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple programmers.” >Even Justice concedes that the source code and signature are the “keys to the kingdom,” that, if stolen, would let hackers and spies enter millions of devices world-wide. So the same pros who can’t defend Office of Personnel Management records should get custody of Silicon Valley’s most dangerous intellectual property. Ideally, the signature is far more dangerous to security than the source code, but anyway it is reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields.
- woodman 11y ago
  > ...but anyway it is reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields. What are you trying to say here? Arguing for compromise in the intentionally weakening of cryptographically secured systems is like arguing for compromise in how much rat poison people should be forced to eat.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- girvo 11y ago
  > reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid I'm not passing judgement on this particular case; but that's a complete fallacy. "All sides" of every given debate are _not_ equally valid in all cases, and in certain cases it is disingenuous to imply that they are. > regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields I can't understand this opinion? Could you clarify what you mean, because from what I'm reading, it seems you're implying that someone who is uneducated in a given topic's "side" in a debate is as equally valid as someone who is? That seems incorrect to me on the face of it, but I'd love some clarification, because it's likely I've missed some nuance here
droopybuns 11y ago
I wrote letters to my Congress critters arguing essentially the same point It is disqualifying that a "leader" like James Comey would argue that the government can reasonably demand that private companies can protect customer secrets and give the government a secret path to access those secrets, in spite of everyone's failure to properly protect secrets (ala home depot, target, opm, et. Al.). This is not the argument of a serious, honest man. It advertises his ignorance of reality and utter incompetence of judgement.
- ars 11y ago
  So if Apple really did make an unbreakable phone then would (should) they have the right to make Apple break it? Let's legislate this issue now, and ignore the fact that they might be able to break it some other way. That's a side point and not very relevant.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
    Legislation does not make me feel safe.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    Not that it matters much, since encryption can be under your own control regardless of whether the government permits a phone manufacturer to sell you a product designed as such or not, but it seems to be already legislated by CALEA [1]. Obama talks like that hasn't been already decided, and outside tech forums I feel like anyone who suggests new legislation for this is gunning for certain parts of CALEA to be changed to restrict freedoms, not grant them. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apples-response-to-doj-your-filing-is-full-blatantly-misleading-claims-outright-falsehoods.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apple...
  - mindslight 11y ago
    On the contrary, let's hope off any legislation is pushed off as long as possible. The concept of an unbreakable container simply does not exist in the public's nor the government's realm of possibilities. Historically if some device was created by a person, it could be undone by a more-powerful a group of persons. Might makes right, in the prescriptive sense. So until unbreakable encryption becomes widely distributed and appreciated by the majority, the only thing that can come out of any legislation is the same top-down power structure most everybody has been primed to accept. We can only hope that the group drafting any legislation remains unconcerned about preventing truly secure encryption, to avoid the result of preemptively criminalizing various types of code for everybody! This is the threat to worry about - government forcibly restricting the advancement of society, simply so that it may retain better control over us. What makes this situation so worrying is that Apple has sold the story of unbreakable encryption for a system with a designed-in backdoor! This merely provokes the government's immune response over a capability that the people don't yet widely have.
ra1n85 11y ago
Does this surprise anyone? Nevermind that this all an exercise in charging windmills. How woeful it is, too. Billions of tax dollars spent in trying to defeat the inevitable. All with a "constitutional scholar" as a president. It's like the Prohibition of the 21st century, just tinged with free speech and notes of a surveillance state.
- cmurf 11y ago
  The alternative view is the president is giving FBI enough rope to hang themselves. The president doesn't need to get into every single battle.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    > The president doesn't need to get into every single battle. True. But there's some debate over whether this is about one phone or about all phones. And the President did weigh in on the wider issue, which is, how to keep people safe in a world with strong encryption. He discussed it at SXSW and also in follow up comments by his Press Secretary [1]. He is convinced there is a way to guarantee warranted access to decrypt data. He does not understand that encryption technology is words on paper that anyone could write or make use of through free and open source software and apps. [1] https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s
    - cmurf 11y ago
      It isn't really clear what the president believes, because all of these statements are glittering generalities. In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter, because aside from a full break crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale. And Exhibits A through G show the government has a lot of problems keeping large amounts of data secure. So escrow won't happen. The user doesn't know the key. And the user thus far can't be compelled to hand over a KEK via their passphrase. Governments owning exploits is arguably them not protecting the public by withholding important security information. All of this leads to reduced trust. So I choose to think they know more than they let on. And this is about getting clear buy in from the public for whatever policy emerges. Because established policy is harder to unwind legally, and when the public is screaming for heads to roll this isn't good for our trust model. It's simply better for FBI to air the dirty laundry this way. The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.
banku_brougham 11y ago
I'm pretty upset about this.
dang 11y ago
Please don't rewrite titles to editorialize. The HN guidelines ask you to use the original title except when it is misleading or linkbait. (Submitted title was "WSJ: FBI lacks credibility and basic competence".)
- chmaynard 11y ago
  I posted this link several days ago and there were no comments. I decided to post it again with a title that attracted more attention. Is there a better way to re-post a link?
  - dang 11y ago
    Not really, but a small number of reposts are ok if a story hasn't had attention yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
a_imho 11y ago
"an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone." do we have any idea who is this outside party and how are they connected to Apple if at all? Could this be a case of having a cake and eating it too?
- sathackr 11y ago
  News articles from a week or so ago reported that Cellbrite was assisting them. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrite-idUSKCN0WP17J http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrit...
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I think several parties explained how it was trivially possible for the FBI to do this themselves, including the ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-iphone-case-fraudulent https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-...
matthewaveryusa 11y ago
For me the interesting thing happening here isn't the encryption debate itself, but the fascinating friction between politicians and engineers. It's the juxtaposition between individuals whose profession relies on using rhetoric to convince others on an agenda regardless of logic versus professionals that rely on sound logic regardless of rhetoric. If logic doesn't prevail, Orwellian statements like "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" can conceivably be truisms (If it's not already the case now.)
- DickingAround 11y ago
  Their whole world is part of why we don't have the GDP growth we want. People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. They don't build and invent anything other than more actionless words and sentences. Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. It's easy to criticize the endless debates (and it's often over subject matter that looks silly), but this sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US. It prevents leaders from moving too quickly in a direction which may have negative consequences. The trade-off is that everything takes forever to get done. >but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. It's hard to argue that the system doesn't work.
    - DickingAround 11y ago
      It's a good point that solid debate at the federal level prevents them from moving too quickly. But I would counter by saying that if their debate is consuming a large portion of our GDP, the infighting alone holds us back and I'd prefer they just went home and did something else: 3.8T fed budget / 16.8T US GDP ~= 22% being consumed by them. If 10% of that is waste (~2% of GDP) and we're growing at 2% GDP/year, the difference is doubling in 30 years (which might not even show in GDP/person due to population growth) vs a 3.7X increase in 30 years, which is a strong and innovative nation. In short, even just a 10% waste on their part might be holding back the whole nation. I bet the overhead waste of the feds is 10%. I don't even want to think about how much the military waste is holding us back.
zeveb 11y ago
This is actually huge: when the government has lost the Wall Street Journal then it's truly lost its constituency. And of course the article is correct: this was all absurd from the get-go.

156 points by chmaynard 11y ago

The FBI (very briefly) responded at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbi-is-trying-to-crack-the-san-bernardino-case-not-set-a-precedent-1458765774 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbi-is-trying-to-crack-the-s....

Sacho 11y ago
Their argumentation is ridiculous. The litigation cost Apple money, and could have had devastating effects they are all too aware of if a precedent was set. Their argument is basically "Carpet bombing is good because in the process of wiping out civilians we managed to kill a terrorist". There's a myriad of other ways they could have "stimulated creative people"(for example, by bloody paying them to do it instead of paying lawyers). That is why I continue to think the FBI's litigation was malicious - out of a myriad of approaches, they decided to pick the one with the worst possible outcome for cryptographic security and tech companies like Apple.
dcw303 11y ago
Nobody buys the Fed's story. It's clear that it was never about a specific phone and only about setting a precedent. Which is all well and good, but it begs the question why did they back out now? Public opinion was divided from the start, and it didn't change dramatically from when the story broke to when they dropped the case. They got a lot of mainstream media exposure, but I would have thought that would have been expected at the least (and probably desired). It's been reported that the other three letter agencies don't share the same view. Did Comey get too much unwanted heat? Is it just a temporary retreat to regroup and fight again another day? Something else? I can't believe that they just expected Apple to roll over.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > why did they back out now? We'll never know. Doesn't matter anyway. If Comey or Lynch is to be fired or forced to resign, then this situation will never be discussed. They'll never admit that they did not do their own due diligence. Lawyers argue their own side and that's it. Lynch and Comey are professionals at this. They only look dumb in this case because they don't know anything about technology. I firmly believe this is true. There's absolutely no value to the US government to seek to weaken Apple's product. Other free forms of encryption exist. If the lawyers really understood that they would never have bothered with the case. Even if the government got Apple's cooperation, there would be so much news about this that even more people would learn how to use encrypted messaging tools. It wouldn't help us defeat terrorists in the slightest and it'd cripple a major US company's primary product. The problem is there are only a few people in the White House and Congress with strong enough voices who understand technology. You have to be a maker of technology to understand this stuff. If you haven't tried to do that and have only ever been a user, there's a good chance you'll never understand it. I remember thinking if I set up WordPress or Drupal for my clients and taught them a little then they will learn to manage their own websites. Nope. In many cases, the older crowd still wanted me to make minor edits that could be done through the web interface. I'm sure you all have experienced the same. So, I think all the time and money was wasted on this because we still have people like Feinstein, who hates everything tech that she can't control, in office. We don't have enough Ted Lieu's. Amazing that CA produced these two opposing characters. Also, the CTO's primary concern is getting more women involved in computer science. She's made no comment on the encryption topic. Obama claims that he understands tech since he created a digital services team, but that's clearly false. Government needs an upgrade and we can only do that with our voices and votes.
- eps 11y ago
  > why did they back out now? Because it's a part of an orchestrated campaign to try and restore international trust in the US companies? Their credibility was decimated by Snowden revelations. This includes Apple who jumped into the bed with NSA as soon as Jobs was out of the way. So Feds cook up a case to challenge Apple on something crypto, scream their lungs out how they can't get in, but then bail out on technicality. The net effect - everyone now thinks Apple is a bastion of privacy and iPhones are Fort Knoxes of quality encryption. What will come next is another case with a major telco vendor (cisco, juniper, etc) that will work to the same effect. Just grab your popcorn and see.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
    You're probably correct, in my opinion. Don't forget the bit where they (Apple) have been issued an NSL, so while the public is distracted by the smoke and mirrors the G-men get what they want.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Apple even said they’d have complied if the FBI had asked secretly – not publicly – like the last 27 times.
      - kabdib 11y ago
        When did Apple say that?
      - macintux 11y ago
        As best as I recall, in that paragraph they did not say they would comply, just that they would make every effort to assist. I believe the subtlety was lost on those who want to believe Apple is being hypocritical.
        kuschku 11y ago
        The difference is still the same: Apple isn’t resisting out of good faith, but because they don’t want to risk a public precedence case.
- taneq 11y ago
  > Which is all well and good, but it begs the question why did they back out now? Tinfoil answer: Because one of your secret courts ruled in their favour in a way that allowed Apple to save face in public?

rz2k 11y ago

>The Justice Department and FBI insist the encryption debate is critical to national security, and they’re right. The problem is that—amid another terror attack in the West—they continue to supply more reasons to doubt their credibility and even basic competence. Which way is this about to go? Does this justify more funding and more legal power? >Instead, Justice rushed to legal war with dubious theories. As it escalated its rhetoric, it even threatened to confiscate Apple’s source code and electronic signature: “The government did not seek to compel Apple to turn those over because it believed such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple programmers.” >Even Justice concedes that the source code and signature are the “keys to the kingdom,” that, if stolen, would let hackers and spies enter millions of devices world-wide. So the same pros who can’t defend Office of Personnel Management records should get custody of Silicon Valley’s most dangerous intellectual property. Ideally, the signature is far more dangerous to security than the source code, but anyway it is reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields.

woodman 11y ago
> ...but anyway it is reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields. What are you trying to say here? Arguing for compromise in the intentionally weakening of cryptographically secured systems is like arguing for compromise in how much rat poison people should be forced to eat.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
girvo 11y ago
> reassuring to see more writing that fails to see all sides of every debate equally valid I'm not passing judgement on this particular case; but that's a complete fallacy. "All sides" of every given debate are _not_ equally valid in all cases, and in certain cases it is disingenuous to imply that they are. > regardless of consensus opinion among experts in the relevant fields I can't understand this opinion? Could you clarify what you mean, because from what I'm reading, it seems you're implying that someone who is uneducated in a given topic's "side" in a debate is as equally valid as someone who is? That seems incorrect to me on the face of it, but I'd love some clarification, because it's likely I've missed some nuance here

droopybuns 11y ago

I wrote letters to my Congress critters arguing essentially the same point It is disqualifying that a "leader" like James Comey would argue that the government can reasonably demand that private companies can protect customer secrets and give the government a secret path to access those secrets, in spite of everyone's failure to properly protect secrets (ala home depot, target, opm, et. Al.). This is not the argument of a serious, honest man. It advertises his ignorance of reality and utter incompetence of judgement.

ars 11y ago
So if Apple really did make an unbreakable phone then would (should) they have the right to make Apple break it? Let's legislate this issue now, and ignore the fact that they might be able to break it some other way. That's a side point and not very relevant.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
  Legislation does not make me feel safe.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Not that it matters much, since encryption can be under your own control regardless of whether the government permits a phone manufacturer to sell you a product designed as such or not, but it seems to be already legislated by CALEA [1]. Obama talks like that hasn't been already decided, and outside tech forums I feel like anyone who suggests new legislation for this is gunning for certain parts of CALEA to be changed to restrict freedoms, not grant them. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apples-response-to-doj-your-filing-is-full-blatantly-misleading-claims-outright-falsehoods.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apple...
- mindslight 11y ago
  On the contrary, let's hope off any legislation is pushed off as long as possible. The concept of an unbreakable container simply does not exist in the public's nor the government's realm of possibilities. Historically if some device was created by a person, it could be undone by a more-powerful a group of persons. Might makes right, in the prescriptive sense. So until unbreakable encryption becomes widely distributed and appreciated by the majority, the only thing that can come out of any legislation is the same top-down power structure most everybody has been primed to accept. We can only hope that the group drafting any legislation remains unconcerned about preventing truly secure encryption, to avoid the result of preemptively criminalizing various types of code for everybody! This is the threat to worry about - government forcibly restricting the advancement of society, simply so that it may retain better control over us. What makes this situation so worrying is that Apple has sold the story of unbreakable encryption for a system with a designed-in backdoor! This merely provokes the government's immune response over a capability that the people don't yet widely have.

ra1n85 11y ago

Does this surprise anyone? Nevermind that this all an exercise in charging windmills. How woeful it is, too. Billions of tax dollars spent in trying to defeat the inevitable. All with a "constitutional scholar" as a president. It's like the Prohibition of the 21st century, just tinged with free speech and notes of a surveillance state.

cmurf 11y ago
The alternative view is the president is giving FBI enough rope to hang themselves. The president doesn't need to get into every single battle.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > The president doesn't need to get into every single battle. True. But there's some debate over whether this is about one phone or about all phones. And the President did weigh in on the wider issue, which is, how to keep people safe in a world with strong encryption. He discussed it at SXSW and also in follow up comments by his Press Secretary [1]. He is convinced there is a way to guarantee warranted access to decrypt data. He does not understand that encryption technology is words on paper that anyone could write or make use of through free and open source software and apps. [1] https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s
  - cmurf 11y ago
    It isn't really clear what the president believes, because all of these statements are glittering generalities. In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter, because aside from a full break crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale. And Exhibits A through G show the government has a lot of problems keeping large amounts of data secure. So escrow won't happen. The user doesn't know the key. And the user thus far can't be compelled to hand over a KEK via their passphrase. Governments owning exploits is arguably them not protecting the public by withholding important security information. All of this leads to reduced trust. So I choose to think they know more than they let on. And this is about getting clear buy in from the public for whatever policy emerges. Because established policy is harder to unwind legally, and when the public is screaming for heads to roll this isn't good for our trust model. It's simply better for FBI to air the dirty laundry this way. The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.

banku_brougham 11y ago

I'm pretty upset about this.

dang 11y ago

Please don't rewrite titles to editorialize. The HN guidelines ask you to use the original title except when it is misleading or linkbait. (Submitted title was "WSJ: FBI lacks credibility and basic competence".)

chmaynard 11y ago
I posted this link several days ago and there were no comments. I decided to post it again with a title that attracted more attention. Is there a better way to re-post a link?
- dang 11y ago
  Not really, but a small number of reposts are ok if a story hasn't had attention yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

a_imho 11y ago

"an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone." do we have any idea who is this outside party and how are they connected to Apple if at all? Could this be a case of having a cake and eating it too?

sathackr 11y ago
News articles from a week or so ago reported that Cellbrite was assisting them. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrite-idUSKCN0WP17J http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrit...
merpnderp 11y ago
I think several parties explained how it was trivially possible for the FBI to do this themselves, including the ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-iphone-case-fraudulent https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-...

matthewaveryusa 11y ago

For me the interesting thing happening here isn't the encryption debate itself, but the fascinating friction between politicians and engineers. It's the juxtaposition between individuals whose profession relies on using rhetoric to convince others on an agenda regardless of logic versus professionals that rely on sound logic regardless of rhetoric. If logic doesn't prevail, Orwellian statements like "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" can conceivably be truisms (If it's not already the case now.)

DickingAround 11y ago
Their whole world is part of why we don't have the GDP growth we want. People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. They don't build and invent anything other than more actionless words and sentences. Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. It's easy to criticize the endless debates (and it's often over subject matter that looks silly), but this sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US. It prevents leaders from moving too quickly in a direction which may have negative consequences. The trade-off is that everything takes forever to get done. >but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. It's hard to argue that the system doesn't work.
  - DickingAround 11y ago
    It's a good point that solid debate at the federal level prevents them from moving too quickly. But I would counter by saying that if their debate is consuming a large portion of our GDP, the infighting alone holds us back and I'd prefer they just went home and did something else: 3.8T fed budget / 16.8T US GDP ~= 22% being consumed by them. If 10% of that is waste (~2% of GDP) and we're growing at 2% GDP/year, the difference is doubling in 30 years (which might not even show in GDP/person due to population growth) vs a 3.7X increase in 30 years, which is a strong and innovative nation. In short, even just a 10% waste on their part might be holding back the whole nation. I bet the overhead waste of the feds is 10%. I don't even want to think about how much the military waste is holding us back.

zeveb 11y ago

This is actually huge: when the government has lost the Wall Street Journal then it's truly lost its constituency. And of course the article is correct: this was all absurd from the get-go.