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Comment by solotronics | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the FBI/iPhone event was a psychological operation to make everyone think the Fed couldn't get into an iPhone.

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At the end of the day, the FBI has to win cases in court. What are they going to do with this elaborately orchestrated secret? "Your honour, everyone thought we could not extract evidence from an iPhone but... Psych! We totally can!"

What you described is Standard Operating Procedure for FBI, DEA, and intelligence services if the method is too good to give up. What they do in those situations is try to come up with alternative methods tgat can justify how they obtained the information. That process is called parallel construction. FBI and local departments have even been intentionally losing cases to avoid light being shed on some of their tools, esp stingrays.

Not saying it's happening here. Just reminding you they do this.

I understand that but my point is that the FBI is not like an intelligence service - fundamentally, their endgame takes place in the public sphere and under public scrutiny. Yes, they have legal means at their disposal to protect their methods and sources. The operative term being 'legal'. They can't lie to a federal judge to try to compel Apple to help them do something they can already do. If they did, and it came out (which it certainly would), it would be at a massive political shitstorm with fired directors and congressional investigations as an absolute minimum. It would make their actual job a zillion times harder to do. It's just not in their interest at all.

Well, part of their job is a national police force where the endgame takes place in the public sphere.

The FBI does also have a significant counter-intelligence function where the endgame is often "foreign diplomat declared persona non grata".

This detail does not support 'FBI lies to federal judiciary in psyop to mislead everyone about their iPhone-cracking capabilities' in any meaningful way.

Well, no. That's a bit of a silly position.

I agree that's a silly scenario. That didn't stop it from being their exact position in San Bernardino. They were using it to prop up the All Writs Act as a tool to force any telecom to provide backdoors or exploits for them. They wanted it as a precedent. It would make their job so much easier. They bullshitted the courts saying they needed Apple's help, Apple resisted well, they backed off, and then then they suddenly could crack it anyway. Tada!

"They can't lie to a federal judge to try to compel Apple to help them do something they can already do. "

You nust have missed the whole Snowden leaks where they were all lying to Congress, courts, and so on. Far as the FBI, here's what they say: "That pertains to highly classified matters of national security. Im afraid I can't discuss that here." (Keep repeating.)

They've also been lying about their counterterrorism cases. That one expose showed they're paying undercovers $100,000 or so to convince harmless people to try something. Even financing, equiping, and training them. They sell it in court as them stopping what was already going on. Despite one informant recording them, nobody leading the FBI is fired or doing time. Deception is business as usual.

This manages to be both condescending and to avoid engaging what I'm saying in any substantive way. Good place to stop.

You said they dont lie about their capabilities in courts Snowden leaks showed they partnered with NSA on backdooring US companies crypto while lying in court about how they could do nothing about crypto. Esp in the Apple case. It is a good time to modify your ckaims to fit that data or quit.

specific case -> 'Snowden leaks' -> NSA ->? is not really an argument, it's rhetoric. I don't have to modify my claims in the face of the apparent impossibility to pin yours down to anything specific.

You still on this? The Snowden revealed the FBI lied about tons of things they could do. So did the NSA. Piles of them. If you need specifics, start with "Core Secrets" by The Intercept as it includes the slides saying FBI "compelled" companies to "SIGINT-enable" their products/networks. Which means forced backdoors through secret means.

So, in courts, FBI said that targets using encryption by U.S. companies was impossible to do anything about. They needed expanded powers under things such as All Writs Act to get at the information in such devices. In secret, they were backdooring U.S. companies' products with NSA. They and the DEA were getting actionable information from those programs that they had to hide from courts under a process called parallel construction. They had to create a second trail of evidence that made it look like they found the person another way. Then, get the conviction through that second trail of evidence. The FBI was also willing to dismiss cases any time its claims were tested in court presumably because the claims were lies and methods unconstitutional.

So, the Snowden leaks, the San Bernardino case, and activity around things such as Stingrays shows the FBI will lie to courts to achieve political or legal ends. They'll even sacrifice their own court cases to protect their illegal methods. So, your claim that they won't lie in court or that court has some power over their corrupt activities is false. They consistently mislead everyone they can about both encryption and backdoors. They even exit courts when caught without any criminal penalties whatsoever. James Comey is in fact still free and directing the FBI despite caught in tons of lies from Congress to courts to media.

FBI will lie about these topics in court. They've done it consistently for over a decade now and nobody there has been imprisoned for it. QED.

If I were to bet, it was the other way around. They said they got into it when they actually couldn't.

Unlikely. First, we know what they paid for the hack, and secondly, the iphone involved was an old model without a secure enclave - multiple researchers suggested different attacks.

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