Apple Says Right to Repair iPhones Will Turn Nebraska Into a ‘Mecca’ for Hackers
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motherboard.vice.com
> Right to repair bills in each state require manufacturers to provide software tools to bypass locks that prevent repair.
No, sorry. I do agree with companies (not just Apple) with locking down the security components to ensure no one could just take your device, replace a few components and give it back without your knowledge. We live in an increasingly mobile-only world and where such mobile components are getting more complex, powerful and more information-dense.
We're not talking about a dumb mower that is not storing any of your personal information, we're talking about a smart phone with complex security systems in it. Apple has the absolute right to protect it in order to protect your data, even in the ways that prevents you from repairing it yourself. With this law, there's no barrier or visible line between your ex replacing parts to monitor you and you replacing parts to repair it. Apple has a security lock for a very clear reason, to prevent your ex from doing this.
If you want to repair the broken Touch ID sensor and stuff, take it to Apple or if there's no store, mail it in.
If you just want to replace the battery or screen, then yes, Apple should be forced to sell these parts, just not the security related parts. Did the law clarify this distinction?
> We're not talking about a dumb mower that is not storing any of your personal information.
Exactly. That's why it's even more important that we be able to repair it ourselves.
> Apple has the absolute right to protect it in order to protect your data, even in the ways that prevents you from repairing your yourself.
There are no absolute rights. There are laws. I trust myself more than Apple and I don't think there's much you can say to convince me otherwise.
> If you want to repair, take it to Apple or if there's no store, mail it in.
Nope. I'd rather not, thanks! That's why we're going to get this law passed.
I don't trust anyone, but I only want Apple to hold the keys, not all random repair stores. It is a FAR worse idea to force Apple to provide security bypasses.
If security bypasses can be provided securely as LONG as you authorize it on the spot, then heck yes, force Apple to do this. But if they cannot, then nope, they shouldn't be forced.
> Exactly. That's why it's even more important that we be able to repair it ourselves.
I don't think we're disagreeing here, I'm totally on your side that we should be able to repair everything ourselves but I cannot agree with forcing companies to provide security bypasses in a manner that may be done without your knowledge.
> There are no absolute rights. There are laws. I trust myself more than Apple and I don't think there's much you can say to convince me otherwise.
You are correct, I phrased it wrong since there is a clear technical definition of what absolute right means.
I didn't say you shouldn't have the right to repair everything yourself. I'm totally on this but I disagree again on the security components, you should be able to replace it as long as it can be securely does and with information that only you know. Forcing Apple to provide this to repair shops without explicit controls over it, is a bad idea.
> Nope. I'd rather not, thanks! That's why we're going to get this law passed.
I've edited my post after that.
Each customer should hold a personalized key to his own hardware. Then the customer can decide whom he trusts, and give the key to whomever he wants (Apple, some other repair store, do it himself, ...)
The problem is that as long as somebody else holds the key to something you bought, you didn't buy it, you leased it. Or borrowed it. Somebody else can still control it to a greater degree than you yourself. And that somebody now has a monopoly he can use to force thing onto you. Like set prices for repair.
That shouldn't happen.
If you give someone a key to the device, how does the device itself enforce a time-limited key, especially if the crypto-based components are about to be replaced?
That's a straw man, you've already trusted Apple. The argument is 'trust no one else' which seems like a good idea.
I want to own those keys. I actually don't want to trust anybody but myself if I can help it.
Which means hackers could advertise cheap repairs, in exchange for placing malware hardware/software on user device.
I like to see the hardware opensource, as it is immensely valuable, but apple does have a point.
A more secure etc way could be if they made it impossible for themselves to read your data.
tl;dw the process includes a blender.
One example that stood out to me was that a sensor that told the machine something was broken was broken. Due to this, the farmer could not use a perfectly operational tractor for two weeks because there was no way to override the sensor. And the John Deere tech would take two weeks to get out there.
This line sounds like it is directly targeting John Deere and how they handle the manufacture and repair of their tractors. Farmers are actually paying more for ~10-20 year old equipment that can be repaired.
I know WIRED isn't the greatest, but these articles fascinated me. I think after looking at them, that line will make a lot more sense to you.
https://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-high-tech-farm-equipment-n...
I mean, even when I do hand my device to the manufacturer I don't necessarily want to grant them access to my data.
Yes of course, screen/battery/radio etc but suppose we're talking about the TouchID+SoC integrated security component that store your authentication data. Should Apple be forced to provide a security bypass to allow the repair shop to randomly replace this with a different part not authorized by Apple?
There has to be clear definition of what they mean by security bypasses.
The San Bernardino case was different because he wasn't going to be unlocking his phone any time soon...
I have a feeling I'm overthinking what the article said. I need to look at the law itself.
Here's an alternate universe: You replace your home button, and now you need to use your PIN to unlock the device and Touch ID is reinitialised.
And in any case, I don't know why we're playing into Apple's security theatre, if there are technically sophisticated adversaries who can invade your personal security trying to hack you, it's game over for you. Nothing Apple does with Touch ID will be relevant.
Well, no, they don't have an absolute right, do they? Apple's rights are tempered by law.
I meant that Apple as a company has obligations to protect you and your data at all costs. State laws should consider the impact of said forced lock bypasses.
A key everybody has a copy of is not much of a key.
User info should be locked away by the entity to whom the information was entrusted in the first place. In this case Apple. Yes, if you buy an iPhone and use it access/generate information then it is by definition already entrusted to Apple. Don't like it? Don't buy an iPhone. Better yet, go use a self-built Linux PC. Forgo smart phones altogether.
Of note, notice the carve-out for automotive industry.
> Sec. 7. Nothing in the Fair Repair Act shall apply to motor vehicle manufacturers, any product or service of a motor vehicle manufacturer, or motor vehicle dealers.
Why is Nebraska making it easy to repair farm equipment and cell phones but not cars?
[1] http://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/105/PDF/Intro/LB67....
I think Brasch hit the nail on the head with that.
Oh, they meant the other type of hackers
It'd be a different, better world if Symbolics had survived... but you know evolution doesn't quite work that way.
I'm sure Apple has enough resources to follow through with this but not all companies can afford the lawyers and special operations centers to appease local regulatory laws in a single state. Just look around you house and consider how many electronics came from a low budget Chinese vendor.
I'm all for state rights but the costs should always be considered.
As Thomas Sowell said: "Economics is not about good intentions and hopes. It's about cause and effect".
For ex: US Chamber of Commerce just posted this article that 1/3 of small businesses surveyed said they hire less people because of health care costs. It's easy not to spare a tear for big companies. But the real victim of regulatory burden is not mega corps its the small businesses who account for 50% of all employment in the US and 90% of businesses are SMB.
https://www.uschamber.com/above-the-fold/small-businesses-te...
I literally just said Apple isn't the one who will have trouble affording to pay for these regulations. And that it's difficult to spare a tear for a big company.
Reread my comment.
81 major regulations were added each year on average under the Obama administrations 8 years. Major was defined as costing over $100 million each.
The federal register recording legislation has exploded to 75,000 pages from 20,000 a few decades ago.
There are plenty of statistics which show the level of downward pressure regulation puts on small business. This isnt just mega corps wanting to dump chemicals in rivers. It's death by a thousand cuts to reach some ideal perfect consumer marketplace through extensive administrative oversight.
Meanwhile the number of people are starting small businesses has declined significantly and GDP growth has totally stagnated.
It's not a mistake that small business optimism index reached the highest point in decades (since 1980) after Trump announced major regulatory reform.
> When asked to estimate their businesses’ first-year regulatory costs, the average fee was a whopping $83,019! Nearly one-third of small-business owners spend more than 80 hours each year complying with federal regulations.
> This burden is becoming a barrier to entrepreneurship and a likely driver in the lagging start-up rates we’ve seen in recent years.
> More than half of small businesses have held off on hiring a new employee due to regulatory burdens.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/317308-...
All of these are connected:
- the business environment (taxation, regulatory burden, availability of capital) influence the number of people starting businesses
- small businesses already struggle with regulations, especially anyone doing hardware consumer electronics products
- plenty of new major regulations were getting added each year
- the federal register tracks regulations, which is growing in size very fast
- therefore the effect of this new forced repairs regulation would only add to the burden on small electronics companies, making it hard to start them up and compete with the big firms
- small business optimism has been connected to anticipation of the regulatory environment. Regulations must always be factored into to future business planning, it creates a lot of risk to know new ones get added all the time. Not every industry is effected but a big chunk of them do and likely influence the optimism index.
This law is pretty much "give us access to what you already give your techs and let us order from the replacement parts you still have in stock"
Maybe you're onto something, maybe we should only regulate big business.
As for "complexity of software", it often isn't. What's complex are all the software patents and the licensing. I think you see a similar thing hobbling a lot of wireless hardware, or interop with wireless hardware.
I get that many things now have software in them, but some things still need to be treated as a tool instead of a "service" for which you are granted a license. And if it's a one-time payment, being able to update the license whenever a company wants doesn't feel right either. Good steps towards this include this law, or the ruling in Germany (I think) that EULAs are invalid when presented to the user after the point of purchase.
I fully agree with your normative point. Especially as more of the world is computerized, humans are left powerless if they do not have control over the computers they "own". I'm coming from the same place as you here, but...
> Many forms of limiting what you can do to a device are DRM based, e.g. printer ink. And you can't legally circumvent DRM to enhance/restore what devices are actually capable of, not for any technical reason though.
Sure, but many are limited by technical means. For example, there are many phones for which custom ROMs are not available, either because there hasn't been enough interest in rerooting the device or supplying developer time to create the alternative distribution. There's a lot of interest in doing so for a new popular device, but as it keeps getting revved and additional manufactures enter the market, enthusiasm is diluted and dissipates. And while manufacturers save costs through standardization (eg Linux/Android), they also work to decommodify their products to keep from entering a race to the bottom. We're fighting an uphill battle, fundamentally because understanding (compression) is harder than execution (compiling).
Furthermore, devices have become cheap due to economies of scale, which inherently supports the centralization that leads to that decommodification. It's hard to see that we'll ever have a cottage industry of electronics production that isn't drawing from some heavily-centralized component source.
I'm not saying the situation is hopeless, and obviously there is an equilibrium that we are in. But one must acknowledge these fundamental gradients if one wants to have any hope of addressing the situation in a pro-freedom manner.
Turns out they're trying to scare Nebraska into not doing it.
Doug Barnes, of course, told us all along that Apple was hostile to hackers.
[1] Or at least, "I"; I'm hoping it applies to other people as well.
I did laugh slightly at the part where the Apple rep discovered they were dealing with an elected representative who actually was technical and actually would defend their position.
"Apple said we would be the only state that would pass this, and that we would become the mecca for bad actors," (implying that hackers are bad actors)
"They said that doing this would make it very easy for hackers to relocate to Nebraska." (implying that Mecca is where bad people go)
Its good to know some things never change[0]
[0] http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/a2origin...
Out of all of the places that people make pilgrimages to, Mecca is the most well known, and therefore commonly used to refer to a place that's popular for likeminded followers to visit. E.g:It's very common in Canada for marijuana enthusiasts to refer to Vancouver as the Mecca of pot in Canada. There's no negativity in that phrase at all.
They could have said that 'right to repair legislation will turn Nebraska into a hub for Hackers', but that's not what they said.
I don't believe mecca is an ambiguously charged word, nor do I see any evidence to support this claim. It's probably the most commonly used metaphor for a gathering place of like-minded individuals, and was the perfect choice in this context.
We're in trouble when carefully manufactured 'one-line public statements' come from a philosophical opponent via a phone call to a journalist.
Where is Apple itself publicly making this statement? All references in the article are second-hand.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+mecca+for&ye...
One of Apple's whole marketing campaigns was about thinking different.
You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here.
But nice try, turns out you can also own shares of foreign corporations that do no business anywhere near you, so there goes the basis for that argument
Turns out some of those bills were practically written by Apple lobbyists - they are worded in a way to "let you do as much as Apple certified Repair", which as this video shows means it lets you mail in your broken stuff to Apple ... :(
> Right to repair bills, which are currently making their way through eight states (Nebraska, New York, Tennessee, Wyoming, Minnesota, Kansas, Illinois, and Massachusetts), would require electronics manufacturers to make repair parts and diagnostic and repair manuals available to independent repair professionals and consumers, not just "authorized" repair companies.
This seems like forcing Apple rather than releasing consumers. Just another example of over interfering Govts.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13674685 and marked it off-topic.
Your car stops working because you haven't made your mandatory overpriced yearly checkup? Sounds neat
Also having access to at least service manuals (if not complete schematics) can help repair and reuse electronics, which is great for the environment, low wage workers/families and developing nations in general.
But this is how Govts make enemies in business communities. Actions like these what made China 2nd most wealthy nation in record time.
> Ignoring that it will help small businesses.
How ? Common sense tell me this will put more legal requirements; those are never fun.
> being able to do what you want with the things you bought should be a right, not a privilege
Absolutely. But this forces Apple/others. It does not release customers from restrictions. If there are such any restrictions, Govts would be with in their rights to make such user/customer agreements unenforcable. But again, thats what not happening here.
> Your car stops working because you haven't made your mandatory overpriced yearly checkup? Sounds neat
How about you look for more favourable company ? But you know thats what people do. Such anti-customer corporations you are describing does not last for long in the market unless ofcourse Govts are helping them in someway, as the history shows.
> Also having access to at least service manuals (if not complete schematics) can help repair and reuse electronics, which is great for the environment, low wage workers/families and developing nations in general
Irrelevent. You are curbing liberties. Thats the argument against the law.
Small businesses providing repair services is what I meant, but it could also help businesses keep costs low by repairing stuff themselves.
BTW, I'm not only talking about Apple with this right to repair stuff, I'm talking about every company. Companies that make devices everyone lives with and depends on, and they want to retain control of them even though people pay the full price not for renting, but owning.
Yeah you can look for another company. Do it before they're driven out of business or acquired by the established ones. Or you can force corporations to do something that will benefit the population.
Liberties of the corporations. Well, companies really need some restrictions right now. The chase for growth and profits is insane and will fuck up the majority of people and this planet pretty soon.
You sound either like a multi-millionaire CEO or a brainwashed person who believes he's gonna be a millionaire someday. Well, guess what, if you're middle to low class, the odds you'll strike it big are quite low (and they're getting lower every year).
They already have huge advantages, having laws that even the field and allow smaller businesses seems much more pro-business to me.
And you see that as a bad thing?
Frankly these corporations way too much power, from planned obsolescence to bad hardware. I for one would welcome the right to defend against these giants.
I am very quickly starting to lose any sympathy for apple as they turn from a great product company into a financially engineered entity without a trace of real innovation. With a full-on user-hostile attitude, to boot.