Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

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> Regardless of the merit of the case, I think it's pretty inappropriate that you are calling BillG naive.

Actions speak louder than words, I don't care who you are. In this case his words are adding to the dangerous narrative the US Govt wants this debate to be framed on: exploiting a tragic case of terrorism to unlock the legal precedent with 175 other phones waiting in the wings:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-da-access-175-iphones-...

With the FBI having court orders out for 13 similar cases:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/23/11098616/apple-fbi-similar...

If he's not naive, he's been actively complicit as part of the "Old Microsoft" (before security of user data affected their global Azure business model) who was more than happy to provide what ever access they could to the NSA which saw "Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch" and "Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls":

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

To play the devil's advocate, LE can get a court order to search your house, your car, your file folder, tap your phone, and so on, and that's viewed as fair by most people, since there are some checks and balances: they have to convince a judge (we're not talking about the secret NSA court stuff), and have to stick to some rules when they do it.

Why should they not be able to search phones on a case by case basis, with a court order?

That's something reasonable people are going to ask.

Edit: This is a pretty good analysis of why turning over a tool to the FBI is a terrible idea: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5645 - but the FBI is saying they don't want that. The guy in the blog disagrees.

Let's say they meant what they said and everything stays inside Apple. Why shouldn't a court be able to order a search?

> Let's say they meant what they said and everything stays inside Apple. Why shouldn't a court be able to order a search?

It should be more than clear by now they're not asking for a single iPhone's data - (the iPhone data in this case is useless). They're asking for Apple to create a new version of iOS (i.e. that doesn't yet exist) that weakens their own security protections to provide a backdoor allowing the FBI to hack into the iPhone themselves, which a) sets a legal precedent, b) allows them to keep going back to Apple crack new phones c) gives them access to software with a back door they can study and reverse engineer.

The FBI have carefully chosen this case to go public on (specifically denying Apple's request to have the case sealed) precisely because out of all its pending court orders to unlock iPhone's, this is the one that stands the best chance to gain political and public influence necessary to set the legal precedent.

Once set, it will compel Technology companies to create tools to weaken their own security, using their own resources against them, forcing them to include themselves as an Adversary who they need to protect their customers data from. Not to mention if Apple is forced to concede to the US Govt, it will be forced to concede to other governments as well. China have previously demanded to have a master key for all electronics sold in China which they had to back down from due to political and public pressure, if Apple concedes to the US Govt other governments will undoubtedly be demanding the same.

From that link: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/bul...

He says it's BS, but it's kind of his word against theirs. Presumably, if the FBI says one thing and then asks for another, Apple could get the court to put a stop to it.

Like others have mentioned, Apple already have a way to get into any phone, and so far have kept it safe.

The dangerous narrative is Apple's reframing of this debate to shift attention away from the simple truth:

Apple already has a backdoor. This is DRM, not crypto.

They control these devices, top-to-bottom, regardless of the owner's actual wishes.

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