Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzahifadida | Hacker News Reader

If you think that israel is doing anything not sanctioned by the US government you are mistaken. In Israel NSO cant make a move without 7 agencies regulating it. This is considered a weapon sale. The same weapons the US are sponsoring israel and buy them from israeli industry. There is no way NSO will fail from this. So eula or whatever these are matters between states for national security interests.

View on HN

You are extrapolating very tight Israeli state control of the Israeli arms industry (very true) to very tight US state control of the Israeli arms industry, which is not actually how the relationship works.

The US has influence over Israeli sales of Israeli-made arms, but this is costly to exert and only used sparingly. Historically, it's restricted to preventing Israeli arms sales to direct US rivals like China or Russia. When Israel sells guns to dictatorships in Africa or Southeast Asia that the US doesn't like, the Americans are perfectly willing to agree to disagree.

EULAs and other civilian contractual arrangements are important here because these weapons were used against US civilians and US civilian property. When Soltam howitzers kill villagers in Myanmar, the US executive branch doesn't give a damn; but as soon as a US corporation (Apple) has to pay for warranty returns the courts wake up and pay attention.

Yes, the many US government 3 letter agencies would love to have full read access to every single iPhone in the world. It doesn't mean Apple needs to comply, or that doing so without a search warrant is legal in California

>the many US government 3 letter agencies would love to have full read access to every single iPhone in the world

They 100% already do

Baseless speculation is not useful here. Especially when it's toned as some kind of truth.

Baseless? Police even have access to tools like grayshift/graykey to unlock all but the newest iphones (which inevitably will be supported in time). That is what is known publicly because it is so ubiquitous, plenty of leaks suggest far more sophisticated tools among the FBI let alone agencies with a national security interest.

I would suggest doing some reading on AFU (After First Unlock) and BFU (Before First Unlock) unlocked states. In short, BFU is when you restart your phone without unlocking it: the decryption keys for the user storage are unknown until your credentials are entered. When your device is locked after a restart, you're in AFU mode where the decryption keys are stored in memory.

Devices such as Cellebrite use exploits to extrapolate the decryption key from memory, then use that key on the user storage. This is fundamentally how those tools work. If the device is in BFU, they can't collect nearly as much data.

TL;DR: if you're under threat of having your device taken from you, restart it!

I think you are confusing the rights under US law of US citizens compared to everybody else in the world.

For example, as a New Zealand citizen, I don't expect to have many constitutional rights, nor do I expect I can easily enforce any residual rights I might have using the US justice system (especially against three letter agencies).

Actually, the US allows Israel quite a bit of leeway in its underhanded weapons and security services trade. There was that time when Israel almost sold AWACS systems to China:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/israel-wont-sell-awac...

so, the sale didn't go through due to US pressure, but the point is that Israel not only contemplated it, but was going to carry it through.

The only thing I can add to what you said is another cynical thought of mine, starting with the question of why would Apple waste the money in this case? And the only answer I can come up with is that they need to re-establish their image of "security". I can't help but feel with various actions taken by them in recent times this being anything more than theatre unfortunately. If they prevail, I wonder if it will simply be a case of Blackwater renaming themselves.

>why would Apple waste the money in this case?

To set a precedent that they can claim damages for violating their terms and conditions.

Agreed, there is a channel for private entities to resolve matters of the state and that is via lobbying the executive or the legislative. Going after Israel's outsourced intelligence technology research group via the judiciary branch risks Apple being caught in the political crossfire. Apple at the end of the day is not Blackwater, they do not have any form of influence over force if things really hits the fan. Israel isn't a South American banana republic that can be easily overthrown by private corporations either. To put it in perspective, how would you react if (hypothetically) Lockheed Martin gets sued by Yandex if one of their missiles blew up a self driving car being tested in some far flung Central Asian state? Do you expect Lockheed Martin to be bound by contractual laws in the city of Moscow and for the matter to be settled via civilian lawsuit or arbitration?

The US Government is not a single-minded entity. Covert actions sanctioned by a balding old men in a dingy fluorescent lit room can still end up quashed when they come to light and the courts get involved.

Wait until you out about five eyes and the run around the 4th amendment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com