Apple Complied With First iPhone Unlock Court Order in 2008, Says Report

[Tycho24]

Thanks FBI, you help making consumer devices more secure.

You forgot the /sarcasm tag.

 

[charlituna]

Interesting read. Good to see Apple change thier stance .

But they haven't. They still assist law enforcement because that was never the issue. They happily gave the San Bernandino investigators all the data from the existing iCloud backups and copious tech advice on taking the phone to a known wifi, etc.

Their stance is not know and never has been that they won't help. They will, as is within the tech. The FBI was demanding they change their tech for the benefit of the FBI which they won't do

I thought Apple said they have never unlocked a iPhone?

Apples statement:

Has Apple unlocked iPhones for law enforcement in the past?

No.

We regularly receive law enforcement requests for information about our customers and their Apple devices. In fact, we have a dedicated team that responds to these requests 24/7. We also provide guidelines on our website for law enforcement agencies so they know exactly what we are able to access and what legal authority we need to see before we can help them.

For devices running the iPhone operating systems prior to iOS 8, and under a lawful court order, we have extracted data from an iPhone.

We’ve built progressively stronger protections into our products with each new software release, including passcode-based data encryption, because cyberattacks have only become more frequent and more sophisticated. As a result of these stronger protections which requires data encryption, we are no longer able to use the data extraction process on iPhones running iOS 8 or later.

Some folks say it's a pedantic semantics game for them to say they haven't unlocked the phones since they pulled data but it doesn't make it a false statement. They have never removed a passcode lock. And in recent years they traced several security bugs to the systems that allowed them to bypass said lock and still pull data and they fixed those bugs to better secure customers private data. Happens that it means they can't really help LEOs anymore which is why the FBI made the demands they did. And will keep making them. Which has actually lead to Apple giving them a rather big finger and now your iCloud backups can be double passworded using your previous passcode or the passcode of another iCloud enabled device. In fact I think it might be on by default if you are on 9.3.1, maybe just 9.3. So the next phone the FBI wants the backups for they will get a file they can't read. And Apple likely can't open for them either.

 

[gnasher729]

If evidence is illegally obtained, for whatever reason, then the particular evidence can be excluded from trial, no matter how valid or invalid the original warrant. You do not need to explain it to me again. Ask any lawyer yourself.

It doesn't matter even if it's obtained illegally. What matters is whether the rights of the accused have been violated. Violating the rights of a third party is irrelevant. But if the police has a search warrant, things like hacking into the phone are not actually illegal at all.

 

[Swampthing]

And how many court orders have Microsoft and Google complied with?

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.