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Comment by terda12 | Hacker News Reader

> The government isn't even asking them to crack the phone, they just want Apple to remove the limits so the government can try to brute force it. They're even paying Apple for their trouble.

Well this exact thing isn't THAT big of a deal but it's a slippery slope. If Apple agreed to this then what else can the government ask them to do under the banner of "public safety"? And if Apple were to give the government an electronic way to brute force the touch codes, it would break the trust of every iPhone owner.

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I don't see the slippery slope here. The government is asking Apple to do something that is both possible and reasonable. I see no slope to that from other typical court orders.

Giving the government a way to brute force PINs wouldn't break the trust of every iPhone owner, merely the owners of iPhones with pre-A7 CPUs. And great, if they trusted Apple on this their trust was misplaced. You can't trust companies not to unlock stuff when the government requests it with a legitimate court order. If you want Apple not to decrypt your data, the only way to ensure that is to make it so they can't.

Again, Apple has (so far as we know) made it so they can't, on newer hardware. But this phone that the FBI is trying to get into is older hardware and built such that Apple can get into it. If you're looking to point fingers, blame Apple for building not terribly secure hardware. But don't point fingers too hard, because they're doing it a lot better now.

"Per US versus Apple in the San Bernardino matter, we request a warrant be issued for encryption bypass in this (separate) matter".

The slope is that if they can order Apple to engineer one thing, they can order them to engineer another.

It is possible for Apple to the weaken the secure enclave on all future iPhones. It would be reasonable to do so from the point of view of giving law enforcement a useful tool. Therefore since Apple can be ordered to do engineering to make law enforcement easier, why should they not be ordered to do this?

That is the slippery slope.

> The slope is that if they can order Apple to engineer one thing, they can order them to engineer another.

How does that at all follow? Right now, a cop can lawfully order me to identify myself. Does that mean they can also lawfully order me to go to the nearest coffee shop dressed as Bozo the Clown and shout, "I am in love with the ghost of Princess Diana"?

I don't understand how complying with an order to use an existing security hole to break into in someone's device somehow sets a precedent that the FBI can in the future go to Apple and set the parameters for how their products are designed.

Because the hole doesn't actually exist unless Apple engineers custom code for the FBI. If the FBI can force Apple to engineer code to create security holes for them, that establishes a precedent.

Explained better by someone else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11120036

I would argue that the hole is the fact that Apple can even load new software that allows this attack. It already exists.

But I'm not sure that distinction is important. The other comment you linked to lays it out pretty nicely and it doesn't rely on a hole existing it being created. It's ultimately just about compelling creation.

I wonder, what if the FBI just requested the relevant signing keys and source code? That seems like a much worse outcome, but at the same time less of a reach.

Why is that less of a reach?

Because it's just asking them to turn over information the authorities need for their investigation, which is a pretty normal sort of request. None of this troublesome asking them to build new software.

Fair point.

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