Under iOS 11, authorities won’t be able to image your device without a passcode

This change alone is tempting me, and I have been diehard anti-apple for about a decade now for walled-garden reasons.

I know, I know, walled garden prevents users from opening their phone to vulnerabilities or guaranteeing a secure experience. I guess I wish I could have my cake and eat it too.

> I wish Google Fi would support iOS devices.

I'm curious - how can a carrier support and not support certain networks? Isn't that like saying I wish my ISP supported Linux?

Largely the same here, I'm giving up on Windows too, and I've been using MS OS' since DOS. I'll pay a premium to keep my data secure.

MS was always in bed with the feds, e.g. Skype and crypto backdoors.

It's not anti-freedom. It's just pro-ease-of-use and it's easier to guarantee a quality experience when there are less unknowns and less variables to account for. When everyone is using the same device with the same software, it's much easier to guarantee a great experience.

You can't run a mass maket open platform without security or privacy issues as Users will install things that cause problems.

Unfortunately in the device world you have to pick one over the other. The more open a device is the less it can protect your privacy. We haven't yet seen a device that can do both.

otoh the pro-privacy approach they're taking also increases freedom, such as in the use-case this article is about. Which imo is probably a more tangible freedom to many than the ability to hack around iOS devices or the idea that the app store isn't free.

You can compile and run your own software on the device. You can jailbreak it to get the same results. You also have access to the entire internet which should allow you to do nearly any kind of development you want to do and use the browser in your phone as a UI the same as any other computer.

The only part of their ecosystem that has major restrictions is the App store. Which kind of makes sense as that's one of the few ways in which someone other than Apple could completely trash their platform and make alot of Apple's customers unhappy.

I'm not saying your "anti-freedom" point is completely invalid, but it's really not a major concern for most tech-savvy people, IMO.

I like Open Whipser Systems also but do they really qualify as a tech giant?

totally agree. i think designing software so you dont have access to customer data (zero knowledge or customer held keys) will eventually be a big selling point for SaaS companies

> Companies who ignore user privacy are in for a hit I think, in the wake of equifax.

Are they? Do people care that much? I think, except for those who actually have their credit stolen, the average person just sees it as another headline of the world today, and will move on, the way people still fly United.

Yeah, I really hope something like Gatekeeper comes to iOS. As time moves on (and tech companies stop being apolitical), I'd like to not have the App Store being the only way to get software only my device.

For example Gab was rejected by the App Store because of the content people were posting. Of course, they won't ban Chrome despite being susceptible to the same content violation.

Is it not still possible to set up an AppleID with gift cards you paid cash for? As far as I know it used to be. I still have an AppleID I set up in another country using a free iTunes download code I got from a bottle of soda iirc, never used a credit card and downloaded a free apps that weren't available in the country of my main AppleID.

It sounds an awful lot like you've had an embarrassing personal experience and are blaming Apple

There is no “merely” about it when it is a conscious choice to pursue this business model.

I think you've confused several different trends with each other. I can't see a coherent point here.

Yeah but what choice do you have? Apple is the lesser evil here.

Also there's a big difference between 1) a company collecting and selling your data to other companies 2) a company giving authorities access to your data for complying with anti-terror laws.

I'm not implying i agree with how far governments go to intrude into peoples privacy. Just pointing out that i agree with OP that there's a big difference between for example Googles and Apples stance towards privacy.

I would have loved to see FirefoxOS be a real thing.

Unlike any of the tech giants, they have no incentive to pull you in their ecosystem, embrace open source, etc

If only FirefoxOS had arrived earlier and was not tied to a catastrophic 'web on mobile' idea.

Yes, the underlying technique has not changed and works for iOS 11 (beta).

By the way, the writer of this post now works for Apple on their Security Architecture team.

I would not be surprised if this change came from him.

It still works great, however the linked post uses Configurator and Apple has since replaced it with Configurator 2, so some of the options and workflow are different now.

Have you ever considered reading the article?

"you have to start fresh, with a brand new install of iOS."

That's the worst case for rubber hose.

Even if you give up all your passwords they can still keep beating you to get the "real" pass.

So you are afraid of actors that would torture you to get access to the data.

And your "solution" is to share this experience with your friends by tying their devices to yours and setting up a device in such a manner that that actor would not be able to verify if they indeed have access to the real data stored on it.

This is a recipe for a one way ticket to a very dark place for you and your friends.

For the most part the number one rule of actual data safety is that never implement protection that would put your well being or the well being of others at risk, unless you are protecting the nuclear launch codes no data is worth being physically harmed for.

So, since the vendor will undoubtedly inject themselves into this complex situation for 'usability', you are basically arguing for devices that are never actually controlled by their user because terrorism. Good 9/11 argument there.

"Multi-factor authentication" doesn't make sense unless you're communicating with a server over the network. Biometrics can be copied and faked. Ultimately it's security theater.

Nothing beats a strong password.

If you do have money and effort to spare though, perhaps you can file a suit that gets up to the Supreme Court after enough of those 4hr border crossings.

> As a US citizen they have to let you in

True, and of course they can arrest you the instant they let you in.

They could add a "duress passcode", with an alternate reality of data. I don't expect them to, but it's possible. Bitcoin hardware wallets have this kind of feature to help avoid wrench attacks.

With the facial recognition tech they might be able to measure duress. Or geofence known customs checkpoints. Would love to reasonably claim that I can't give up my data while I fear for me freedom.

I believe that they simply dumped the NAND to circumvent the passcode entry limit then brute-forced. But it was also an iPhone 5C model which does not include the Secure Enclave. This method could not be reproduced on any model beyond the 5S.

What Apple could do to is to move the bar from "rubber hose decryption" to "rubber hose account access" by offering a dead simple cloud recovery. Imagine a "Flight mode" where everything on your phone is backed up to apple and your phone is presented with an "enter backup id and password" dialog which allows you to load anyone's cloud backup and is essential a factory reset. Border control might still force you to enter a backup id and password under the assumption that you surely have one, but (to my limited knowledge of the US legal framework) it would not be a felony to load a "duress" backup id (because there is no such thing as a duress backup id, just different data sets).

You shouldn't be compelled to give up anything that is "you" without a court order and a warrant. Not indiscriminately photographed, fingerprinted, and in some cases tested for drugs against your will.

Canada forces people to unlock their phones, when crossing the border, quite frequently - and have for years. They will make you unlock it, or disallow entry and/or detain you.

There's a whole series that shows this. It's Canadian Border Guard, or similar. I see it when I cross the border, which I do with some frequency. I just unlock my phone for them.

Exactly the same in the US: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/iphon...

The alternative was passcodes and Apple's research suggested that people disabled passcodes rather than use anything secure. TouchID was determined to be far more secure than no passcode and having both TouchID and a passcode is secure enough for most users. You can't add devices without both (along with an Apple ID password) and, at that point, you have physical access to the device which negates most security features anyways.

No it is not. It signifies a divide between the tech sector which strives for privacy and government (which is/was supposed to protect the people)

"Apple encrypts End-to-end all iMessage chats, as well as FaceTime (VoIP) calls."

End-to-end encryption does not guarantee that Apple keeps your data encrypted, or that they don't process it for 3rd parties (NSA would fit as a 3rd party, where Apple would be for them a content provider, as the slide shows).

"You can bet your ass their arm was twisted by the government or they were taken into the program unknowingly (datacenter ISP taps, etc)."

Can you back that up ? How can you be so sure ?

I think I would prefer the passcode which can be set to a length much larger than 4 digits when travelling or getting anywhere near fed-gov.

Thanks for sharing that info, but I think the problem is that Apple is marketing these methods of identification as methods of authentication. Sacrificing security for convenience.

Even if they have a kill switch in place, the users least likely to know about it are the users who are most likely to use insecure methods to "secure" their phone, I would think.

Something that I think people underestimate is just how easy it is to observe you entering your password on a phone, and why that (in my opinion) makes thumbprints much more secure than passwords for casual usage - e.g. every-time you unlock your phone.

All you need is a camera over your shoulder and you don't even need to observe the key-presses as generally the current character is displayed on screen. You could likely observe 100s or 1000s of them a day with an overhead camera at transit stations and the like.

The same thing goes for "Tap And Go" contact less payments not requiring a PIN number under $100. Everyone goes on about how people can run up a few hundred dollars at different stores with your card if they steal it. But consider exposing your pin to surveillance during most common transactions which then also lets you remove cash from an ATM with that card if stolen which is much harder to recover and is also much higher value than the generally $30-$100 limit for transactions without a PIN.

Next minute you'll freak out when I tell you I can clone your house key from a photo of it hanging off your belt...

The general point is that security trade-offs are generally deeper than you might realise on the surface, especially at "public outrage" levels of observation which so frequently haunt the public mind in recent times.

I'm not sold on this Face ID business yet though.. will see how it is presented tomorrow.

Presumably they can just point the phone at your face instead of forcing you to put your finger on the sensor.

TouchID has 3-5 tries before it gives up and requires password. There are 10 fingers + failed presses. It can also be turned off in duress (or will deactivate after a few hours or after reboot).

I always turn off my iPhone for checkpoints or traffic stops. They want it, they can decrypt it the hard way.

That's a great capability I hadn't considered. Your passcode isn't just a 3d composite of your face, but instead could be a 3d composite of your face performing a specific gesture over a short amount of time (wink, kiss, tilt, etc). Would be harder to spoof.

I'm patenting the Duck(face)Lock(TM)(R)(C)(Registered)(DontStealMe) immediately