| Author |
Message |
    
Brighton
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2016 - 10:27 pm: | 
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In order for the current story to make sense you must accept:
1) The F.B.I. couldn't quietly get what they needed (thru Homeland Security, i.e. CIA or NSA or ...) but some third party could provide it; a third party that's smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
2) This third party doesn't mind that the F.B.I. has let the world know about this valuable but no-longer secret tool.
The real question for me is what was this all about in the first place?
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Aesquire
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2016 - 11:30 pm: |
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Power. |
Brighton
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 01:32 am: |
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I suspect this latest claim from the FBI is more about taking the encrypted iPhone out of the toolbag of bad guys.
Else why make this latest turn so public despite the ability to keep it secret using FISA?
It doesn't matter if it's true, only that it might be true.
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Brighton
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 01:59 am: |
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Another possibility is that Apple agreed to cooperate on condition that it not be made public.
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Reepicheep
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 08:27 am: |
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Several layers here (I think).
The government wants things the way they had them, which is to be able to walk into the back door of any major tech firm and bully their way into being given what they want.
I get why they want that, and I am sure it would have a national security benefit, but I am also sure it would be badly abused. And because our (and other) governments are now hyper focused on making that all secret (companies that had this done to them can't even disclose that it is happening), I'm done with it, and I would rather accept and absorb the national security risk then turn our own government into another tyrant from which we have to defend ourselves. Had they done everything they did with complete and total transparency (accepting the national security damage that transparency would bring) then maybe I would have tolerated it. But they didn't, so there it is.
The second factor is that there was a trivial way to break into the phone found recently. The vulnerability would have been present on this phone, as the scumbag terrorist is dead like he should be and can't force the phone to update. My 7th grade daughter actually showed me the hack to get in.
It isn't guaranteed that there will be some kind of back door for every version and configuration of every device. But there usually is, especially if you wait a while.
So here is my read on the situation (half educated guesses)
1) The government was waiting for some kind of awful terrorist act involving somebody with an IPhone to force exactly this issue, because post Snowden, Apple isn't rolling over for the secret courts and secret police anymore. That's what this was really about.
2) Law enforcement knows there isn't anything on that phone that will tell them anything they don't already know or that they couldn't gather by other means.
3) Law enforcement likely already had other means to get into that phone, or could have developed them, but wanted to force the back door back open.
Post 9/11, I was cautiously accepting of all the idiocy that was the patriot act. Had it been executed with a reckless transparency (accepting risks resulting from transparency to get the greater risk mitigation of back door access to technology), I might have continued to be cautiously accepting.
But this kind of power given to a government is like a bottle of Jack Daniels and keys to the Camaro handed to a 17 year old boy. It always ends the same.
So I now think that we just have to accept that innocent people who could have been saved will die because we have to tie the hands of law enforcement in a few fundamental ways. This makes me very sad, but I think even more innocent people end up dying when you give governments the kind of power and secrecy rights needed to prevent this kind of stuff (and it ultimately doesn't stop, it just slows it down by making it change tactics). |
Ratbuell
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 07:40 pm: |
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My question is this (as I watch a rerun of "Castle" where they just did this) -
Why didn't they just use the dead terrorist's finger, to do the fingerprint unlock?
DUH. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 08:09 pm: |
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In order for the current story to make sense you must accept:
1) The F.B.I. couldn't quietly get what they needed (thru Homeland Security, i.e. CIA or NSA or ...) but some third party could provide it; a third party that's smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Somehow this is believable to me. |
Phelan
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - 09:49 pm: |
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Joe, you should be an FBI agent lol |
Zac4mac
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - 09:01 am: |
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Joe - the fingerprint will open it but you have to use the password after not opening the phone for 24 hours or more.
Z |
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