Thread: Apple's stand against the Feds

Originally Posted by Hirlau

A couple of things need to be understood here before we get back to the letter at hand & the tactics being used on both sides to get what they want.
This is not a chest beating contest on Patriotism,,, I too am a veteran, from a long line of veterans, we have seen it all too.
The government is not my enemy now, nor when I actively served. The same men & women who work for the government we are bashing here, have veterans in some of their families.
Don't put words in the mouths of our dead to justify an opinion here, not right,,, not fair to me & others to who believe as I do, on the letter.

I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth. Privacy is the root of freedom and many have died for this very thing....they all involve privacy (see revolutionary war). It's a fact, not an opinion. Them bullying Apple and taking that freedom/right is what is not "fair" as you would say. I am not anti government either. I am anti them taking whatever they feel is right. I am active duty so that would make me a card carrying member of Uncle Sam. If you think this will actually stop or fix anything you are sadly mistaken.

Having a family member or friend in the military doesn't mean anything to me unless it's a spouse or child. Most of the me making the decisions are old enough to have had children in the civil war. I am not bashing them I am saying they can do better and we don't hold the, to a standard as it is.

As far as chest beating, rhensly asked "have you lost family members to terrorist". That led into me explaining I have I fact lost people and people have died way before all this.

You will never convince me one cell phone will make a difference.

Thanks for the debate men. It was fun.

And no hard feelings, debating is healthy. I am here for the razors.

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Just don't look in my closet,,,,,

How many bottles of Clubman do yo have in there????

There you go,,, off topic too,,,,,, now you got me off topic , as its 8 minutes in to Clubman Friday.

Forgive me Prodigy,,, for I have sinned,,,,,

Just ask Snowden he knows. They can get anything they want and the truth about why they want a backdoor will not be revealed to us commoners.

So some terrorist buys a straight from me. The FBI finds all kinds of friendly chat between us and some joking around I don't know could implicate me in some crime I know nothing about. FOUL !

They start to look at me and being a closet writer I have started a book about a guy that kills half of congress. I end up at Guantanamo getting water boarded ? FOUL ! If you can assure me none of this would happen if they get their back door then let them have it. However I don't trust anybody enough to believe that assurance.My pc holds a lot of my thoughts and that's all they are and nobody else's business PERIOD. Bad people kill good people, such is life. You want in my phone shut up about taking away my guns . Even trade :<0)

Anyone have Direct TV or Comcast? The system is totally secure locked by algorithms. How many folks would want to hack those sell black market boxes. They have no problem keeping that a secret as do many other companies that make products locked by technology. Cell phones are just one example.

Oh I know it's private corporations and they are our friends and can be trusted but the Govt is the enemy and can't.

Give me a break.

I don't think a lot of the posters in this forum have actually taken the time to both read the letter and also do research (or already have knowledge) about the extreme level of encryption of the iphone in order to make it the most secure device possible. The problem the FBI (& NSA, & whatever other 3 letter organizations we've never heard of) now have with hacking into these devices is that each device is individually encrypted with a combination of software & hardware encryption that makes it impossible to brute-hack. Even if you could bypass the hardware aspects (which you can't... the device becomes unusable and the hard drive is worthless) it would take a supercomputer up to 6yrs to brute-attack the software password of a standard 6-number pin. If you use a longer password or add alphanumeric characters it multiplies that length of time exponentially for each character added. Also, there is no single encryption key - each individual iphone has a "secure enclave" chip that is tied to the hard-drive and the touch ID fingerprint scanner - if you try to remove/replace any of the three from each other the phone is rendered useless (Apple is currently facing a lawsuit because of this - unauthorized third party shops were replacing Touch ID fingerprint sensors when replacing a broken screen if they damaged the cable in the process... the Touch ID fingerprint identification abilities were immediately unusable, but you could still log-in with the password/pin, however when you tried to update the software the entire phone would become "bricked" with the processor identifying that you were trying to update core-level software after altering a key security component of the phone that has access to the secure enclave - this was programmed this way by Apple so a hacker couldn't replace the Touch ID sensor with something that could "read" the encryption keys from the secure enclave and then let you upload software to the phone to let you bypass the other security features). What the FBI is demanding (and a judge has issued a warrant for) is that Apple MUST write a new version of iOS software that can be installed on a phone without the password authorization from the user and that then allows you to bypass all the hardware and software protections. This would render all the security for ANY and EVERY iPhone useless if it got into the wrong hands. "That's fine, I don't care if the FBI wants to search my phone, I have nothing to hide and if you're a law-abiding citizen you shouldn't have anything to hide either... if it can help prevent a terrorist attack it's worth it." The fact is, if this software existed and then leaked or the backdoor was discovered by hackers it would make identity theft a piece of cake. It would make hackers and terrorists able to obtain classified information and the GPS location of any President, Senator, Congressman, Judge, CIA/NSA/FBI operative, etc, who uses an iPhone, thus enabling new types of targeted terrorist attacks. It would also allow those hackers or terrorists to gain information on those same people and also employees of the CDC, or other people with access to weapons, explosives, diseases that they can blackmail those people with (hack into the phone of a janitor/employee/scientist in the CDC, find out he is having an affair, tell him if he doesn't get you a petri dish growing Ebola that he'll tell your wife and ruin your marriage... or use the GPS coordinates of one of the scientist's kids' phones to kidnap the kid and then demand the same)... on and on and on... this would open up a can of worms in ways no one has even thought of yet in the wrong hands...
...and speaking of wrong hands... if the US Govt can demand and force Tim Cook to make Apple create this backdoor and write the iOS software to allow the FBI, etc, to hack any iPhone... then why can't the British government demand to have it too? ...and if the Brits have got it, by golly, well the Germans are going to demand to have it as well! And next time Tim Cook flies to China for the opening of a new Apple Store he is arrested in the airport and China presents him with a warrant for him to give the software to CHINA, and CUBA, and of course Putin and the Soviets are going to want it as well... and probably worst of all, North Korea... and Tim Cook will be thrown in a Chinese jail until he hands over the software. If the US can demand this software and take away every one of its own citizens' right to privacy, well why can't China? why can't Putin? why can't the Kim Jung-Un?

Just cut off their thumb and use that, seems obvious.....

A tough situation with no easy answers. One thing for sure is that terrorists have succeeded in greatly altering the way we live our lives. Amazing how much people are willing to give up just to "feel" more secure.

Bob

Originally Posted by jfk742

Just cut off their thumb and use that, seems obvious.....

Obviously a joke, but I'll answer as if serious, anyway. First, obviously that wouldn't be legal and the knowledge gained would be inadmissible in court and anything leading from that knowledge would be "fruit of the poisoned tree", so any cohorts you found out about couldn't be arrested. Second, there was a recent case where the Police did in fact want to force a suspect to put his finger on the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone, but the judge ruled that this was illegal, for the same reasons you can't force a suspect to tell you their password or safe combination. Thirdly, iPhones require a password input every time the phone is rebooted and then every 48hrs, so even if you got a judge in a higher court to overrule the former judges' ruling that you can't force someone's finger onto the fingerprint scanner, all the guy has to do is either hold out/delay things for 48hrs or hold the power button to shut the phone down either as the cops are catching him or when they hand him the phone to force him to unlock it with his fingerprint, i.e. "oops, I turned it off by mistake... my bad." Finally, the phone is programmed to force a password input after a certain number of unsuccessful tries and then there is also a setting to erase the phone after a certain number of unsuccessful tries, so all someone would have to do is only program Touch ID to work with an unusual finger (one of the pinkies, for example) and when the cops would force you to put first your indexes on the button, then the thumbs... then... well, now you're locked out and it's forcing a password input.

As a final add-on to my former post, if the court is successful and they arrest Tim Cook, and all the Senior VP's, and all the iOS programmers for contempt of court for not complying with the warrant and writing this piece of software and creating the backdoor to make it useful on any phone (which by the way, is a very, very scary thing... can the FBI then arrest the best scientists/designers in the country and force them to design the best weapons "to fight crime with"? Could they have arrested and imprisoned the scientists of the Manhattan Project if they had stopped work on the Atomic Bomb for moral reasons, saying "this court order says we can arrest & imprison you until you finish work on the Atomic Bomb and give it to us, to win WWII"... that's exactly the kind of persecution many of those scientists fled Nazi Germany because of to begin with!)

So lets say the court maintains this warrant and higher courts support it and Apple keeps fighting it all the way up to the Supreme Court and even they support the warrant and Tim Cook and Co. are arrested/imprisoned until they comply to write this piece of software for the FBI/CIA/NSA, whoever. "Of course everyone in the Government is going to keep it safe and only use it for good." That's fine, let's say we all believe that. Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive, and all the other Apple VP's and iOS designers don't walk around with Secret Service protection. All a group of thugs have to do is kidnap one of them and torture them (rip off their nails one by one, then start cutting off & cauterizing toes, fingers, etc.) until they give in and grant them access to a copy of the software. If done at the right time, it could be hours or a day or two before anyone notices they are gone and notifies the Police. The thugs then use the software to unlock Tim's/Jony's/whoever's iPhone as Proof of Function and proceed to empty their bank accounts - that's the first several million dollars right there. Then they use those millions to flee the country and proceed to sell the software (with news now out of the kidnapping and emptying of the bank account as Proof that the software works) on the Black Market for some more... millions? bilions? How much would countries like China, Russia, and the Middle Eastern Governments each pay for this kind of power? How much would Al Qaeda pay? How much would hackers? And this is software, so they can copy it and sell it to whoever wants it. How many millions of people would have their identities stolen?