Anti-Surveillance Coalition That Includes Apple Condemns Proposals for Device Backdoors

[Phil in ocala]

Stick to your guns Apple keep security tight.

YOu have a picture of Donald Trump....this is happening with his knowledge and full support...do you understand this?

 

[MistrSynistr]

I get a good chuckle out of the liberals here who demand security for their phone but not their country they live in. lol.

 

[Costino1]

The US is in debt up to its ears. I'll bet the Catholic Church has more actual money.

All that gold in the Vatican is worth billionsssssss.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Silly! Privacy is for chumps. Where there is a will and money the will always be a way. Right now, the US Government is the wealthiest entity on the globe.

If it's "silly" then there is no need for a backdoor. Your contention is with or without a backdoor the gov't has the means and will to crack a passcode. Ok, then. Why are gov'ts around the world insisting on a backdoor. But as we've seen, yes, gov't can crack codes with time, but not with the immediacy a backdoor would offer.

Door locks can be picked, or even brute forced ramming the door to enter your home. Do you leave your doors unlocked since locks don't really secure your home? I'd say if you do lock your door it's "silly." Also please let us know where you live in case anyone here that lives nearby can take a tour since, you know, "privacy is for chumps."
[doublepost=1525355192][/doublepost]

The US is in debt up to its ears. I'll bet the Catholic Church has more actual money.

Not so sure about that. The U.S. takes in about 3 trillion in revenue annually. The Vatican is in the hundreds of millions. Yes, the U.S. debt as in dollars it owes is horribly high when compared to its GDP. Not a great situation, for sure. But if you did a balance sheet of assets and liabilities the U.S. would assuredly be in the black. I'm not condoning the free spending ways but your statement is gross hyperbole.

 

[78Bandit]

For those that don't know, Ray Ozzie hasn't been with Microsoft since 2010 and the article should be changed to read FORMER chief software architect. I'm pretty sure he still has contact with the company and may even do some outside work for them, but his opinions are personal and don't represent the official position of Microsoft.

As for the underlying challenge, I believe if there's a law that depicts government (or any other legal/regulatory body) should be given access to contained data then the manufacturing companies should comply by by supplying a capability and demonstrating compliance on demand, it's not a case of wanting too comply or not for any ethical/political/personal etc. reason.

That's the point of the debate. There currently isn't such a law, but the government wants to create one. There are many people who are expressing their opinions that such a law would weaken security significantly and provide a serious risk that such a backdoor could eventually be exploited and grant access to every iPhone made.

Using your laissez-faire attitude toward government regulation it would seem if China passed a law requiring Apple to give it direct access to every iPhone for the purpose of identifying dissident speech then it would be perfectly acceptable for Apple to do so without any complaint or comment. I strongly disagree. As a customer I expect Apple to act in my best interest to the greatest extent possible. Apple may well ultimately lose, but I do want them to fight such a draconian infringement on personal privacy to the absolute bitter end for ethical reasons.

All one has to do is look back at the data vacuuming the government was doing with the tacit compliance of AT&T. Without any kind of warrant they swept up all the data transmitted over the main internet lines and saved it. When confronted, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, outright lied and denied the existence of such a system; yet the Snowden whistleblowing confirmed it.

Do you really trust the government to have the ability to access every electronic device and not abuse that power? If you have any doubts then you should be fighting this proposal relentlessly.

 

[michaelsviews]

This is simple;
Government and/or companies should be allowed to hack into a device, if they can.

They should not be allowed to force a company to build a simple entry point for their convenience.

Based on your statement there should be shall we say a "Master Key" for the Government and Companies that manufacturer smart phones? Why stop there lets have a "Master Key" for all the Bluetooth enabled door locks also?

Big brother / US Government has way too much power now, giving or bowing to them and allowing more is NOT the answer.

 

[jhfenton]

Security is what protects your life. The elected government is your security not Apple or any other commercial enterprise. You can't have money buying power. It's the people with their vote who decide. The government must have control then if you don't like what they do with it you vote them out. It's called democracy. Apple would call it a bad business model. Apple is way too big for its boots.

I keep trying to vote them out, but the Democrats and Republicans keep winning anyway. If the rest of you would get a clue, I'd be a lot more sanguine about the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, governments, including my own, are the organizations most likely to kill or imprison me. It's not very likely at all on an absolute basis, but it's more likely them than Apple (or even Google, contact with which I try to minimize).

 

[Mirice99]

I love how secure my iPhone is, if the police or FBI was able to get access to my photos through a backdoor I would be spending 20 year to life in jail. I am great full Apple helps protect me and the Photos I really don’t want law enforcement to find.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Politicians and hedge funds should be the ones completely open and transparent. Surveillance should be on them primarily, especially as the taxpayer is the one paying for the surveillance and always getting screwed.

 

[dk001]

People are getting more retarded every time. If you do not want your information leaked... do not put it on electronic devices!!! DUHHHHHHHH You do not have to put pictures and stuff on Facebook. You do not need to have your bank account in your emails and stuff.

I mean, people are really mentally challenged these days!

Luddite? It is called information evolution. From verbal to clay to papyrus to paper to digital.
Which age are you suggesting we should rut into?
[doublepost=1525364924][/doublepost]

Heck, Apple and the others have enough trouble plugging the holes they don't know about. Why would they want to add one that everyone would know about. Microsoft chief technical Ray Ozzie's idea might work in a perfect world. But then if it was a perfect world, we wouldn't need it. And if you really want to screw it up, then get the government involved.

Yep. It applies.
[doublepost=1525365147][/doublepost]

Wasn't he the guy who ran the email service that Snowden used? When the government demanded ALL of the keys, he gave them a printed hardcopy (5 point font)?

Link
From Lavabits owner.

 

[MacBH928]

There is so many wrong things with this post:

1-Seriously, what kind of crime can happen IN your computer/device? Its just text, images, and video. Hardly much damage to society can you do with that? (unless you are trying to investigate communication between criminals)

2-The real privacy conceren is not data in the device, its the data going over networks. There is hardly any kind of data on my computer that didn't go over the internet. Encrypting communication, browsing, and data stored of you online is the realy concern. Our e-mails, pictures sent to family over social networks, online profiles, bank accounts, iCloud Storage, health reports...these are the real concern.

3-Did you read the joke of companies that are in this "coalition"? Facebook Dropbox which tricked their Mac user into installing a backdoor , Evernote which had ideas about reading user's stored notes, Snap that forces you to give camera access to use their app, and finally ... Google.

 

[vvswarup]

I get a good chuckle out of the liberals here who demand security for their phone but not their country they live in. lol.

I get a good chuckle out of hypocritical gun right fanatics who don't want anyone encroaching on their precious right to own guns but are so eager to give up their privacy.

 

[idunn]

"The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on [them]."

J. William Fulbright
(United States Senator representing Arkansas)

 

[fmalloy]

I'm glad that Apple is staying strong.

Everyone knows that terrorists and kidnappers need their privacy too!

Except if Tim Cook's family member is every impacted by a crime, somehow, someway, they'll get into the criminal's phone.

And if you don't believe that you're pretty naive.

 

[fairuz]

I don't get it. Microsoft are part of the same group that Apple are a part of saying a loud, "No!" to any weakening of a user's security and privacy, yet there's twit from Microsoft called for a private key for each user to be held by a company so government bodies can get access?

What the hell?!

Microsoft makes by far the most OEM-spyware-infested mainstream OS ever, Windows 10. As if the original invasive features weren't enough, the OS even shows you ads now, and you know what showing ads means.

 

[2IS]

Explain why not.

I only see two reasons why you’d ask this question

1) you jumped straight to the comments without reading the article

2) you read the article but didn’t understand what you read.

 

[NT1440]

Everyone knows that terrorists and kidnappers need their privacy too!

Except if Tim Cook's family member is every impacted by a crime, somehow, someway, they'll get into the criminal's phone.

And if you don't believe that you're pretty naive.

What your asserting is that Apple already has a backdoor.

 

[jonblatho]

lmaooooo tinfoil hat is so strong here

This is a common best practice. People who follow those usually wind up being a lot less sorry.

 

[freelancing]

Hopefully this will make everything more secure as Apple works on making the security more hardened. While I have no problems (in theory) with "the government" accessing the phone of someone who has allegedly kidnapped a child or who is planning to commit acts of terror - "the government" is composed of flawed human beings. I guarantee that these grey boxes will end up out on the black market as various law enforcement agencies lose track of them.

I am unaware of any set-up that lets you do a zero-out of the data on an iPhone. To date, I still have possession of every iPhone my husband and I have ever owned. I will not sell or give any of them away because despite doing a factory reset - I have no way of knowing someone couldn't just use some cloned version of one of these grey boxes and get my passwords and other security data off my phone. I know that there is no system that is 100% secure, but I don't like being a soft target, either.

 

[jonblatho]

[never mind]

 

[chucker23n1]

Everyone knows that terrorists and kidnappers need their privacy too!

Except if Tim Cook's family member is every impacted by a crime, somehow, someway, they'll get into the criminal's phone.

And if you don't believe that you're pretty naive.

I don't believe it because I'm naïve. I believe it because I have a basic understanding of modern cryptography.

 

[fairuz]

You’re horrendously wrong on your math.

Let’s do a fun math experiment. Say a password field accepts 8-256 characters (arbitrary) and each character can be one of a set of 78 characters (26 capital letters + 26 lowercase letters + 10 numbers + 16 symbols). Assuming there are no requirements like at least one capital, etc., that opens up a total of 1.782 × 10^190 possible passwords.

Now say you know the password is exactly 11 characters. That brings the field of possible options down to just 1.693 × 10^81 possible options. Assuming they’re not lying, the field of possible passwords is down to just 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000009501% of what it once was. In other words, the job of guessing the password got
99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999990499% easier. That’s a bit more than 5%. The chances of guessing the password before security measures kick in remain low, but those measures are software and software is imperfect.

People do this all the time, and it’s one of the stupidest things you can do short of just giving out your password. It’s unfortunate.

First of all, from the practical standpoint, I think guessing shorter passwords isn't a waste. Maybe it's just padding; guessing a 4-bit 1011 also counts as guessing a 6-bit 101100. And I'd think that's how it is. They're not going to create a different encryption scheme for every length password.

Even if they're wasted, the waste is small, unless I screwed something up. Takes twice as long if they're bits. With base-10-digit passwords, ~11.1% longer. With alphanumeric lower-case, ~2.8%. Gnasher's estimate was right.

Say the password is actually n bits long. You guess all shorter passwords first, wasting time. The waste is 2^(n-1) + 2^(n-2) + ... + 1 = 2^n - 1, so the number of n-length passwords minus 1. Generalizing that formula to base-x digits*, the waste is 1/(x-1).

* http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+i+from+1+to+n+of+x^(n-i) I was too lazy to do this myself and forgot my geometric series

 

[jhfenton]

I get a good chuckle out of hypocritical gun right fanatics who don't want anyone encroaching on their precious right to own guns but are so eager to give up their privacy.

You must know a different set of gun rights "fanatics" than I do (or more likely you don't really know any). The ones I know--like myself--are quite serious about intrusions on our privacy, particularly governmental intrusions.

 

[dk001]

You must know a different set of gun rights "fanatics" than I do (or more likely you don't really know any). The ones I know--like myself--are quite serious about intrusions on our privacy, particularly governmental intrusions.

Aside I don't see what one has to do with the other.

 

[fairuz]

I get a good chuckle out of hypocritical gun right fanatics who don't want anyone encroaching on their precious right to own guns but are so eager to give up their privacy.

Uh, who? "Gun nuts," which btw is a title one would self-proclaim, are the most privacy-conscious people I know of. I'd even call them paranoid. As for the guns themselves, they're right to want that private, but the other stuff is unrelated, as Rhonindk said.