Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Good. Because military contractors like Google don’t believe in privacy (or security really).
[doublepost=1528930511][/doublepost]

Don’t play those games. Trump is as Orwellian as it gets. It technically started a LONG time ago, but Agent Orange is making it way worse

That’s a bit harsh. Care to provide evidence?
 
What does Apple do in other countries they do business in which are far more intrusive than ours? I find it hard to believe that China or Russia hasn't demanded access.
 
Police work like subpoena phone records, issue search warrants for ones property, subpoena to listen into ones phone and remote conversations, that type of police work. Police work stops at ones iPhone today. All the above police work that has solved huge number of crimes an prevented many more, can easily be moved to ones iPhone. Thus, making police work nearly impossible, especially for crimes done by organized groups.

While I don’t fully agree, you have a valid point. On the flip side, in the big picture this is about a small number of outlier situation. I don’t hear anyone asking about how many crimes are prevented BECAUSE of phone security and privacy.
[doublepost=1528986874][/doublepost]
Wow! Forgot about the Patriot Act, have you?

The hatred for President Obama is astounding!

Yep... almost as much as for Trump! As someone else has already pointed out, the need for balance between privacy and security is far older than technology. This is just the lastest front.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ravenstar
It’s Apple’s job to risk their welfare by making sure the welfare of criminals is safeguarded.

No. It's just an unintended consequence of protecting lawful people. Criminals will always find a way. By the looks of your posts, Apple could open up a back end big enough for you to fit into and they'd still be wrong.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig
Please understand you're conflating two separate issues. Court orders for data have nothing to do with law enforcement cracking a phone. Apple tells you in their transparency report what data they give the government(s), what kind of data, and how often it's requested. The issue addressed in the article has nothing to do with that.

Are you are conflating the conflation? :)

Seriously though, MR is responsible for confusing the issue by combining in this article a story about brute forcing passcodes and Apple's response to law enforcement requests for iCloud data. These are two very different questions. It did generate a whole lot of pointless debate though, so that's good.
 
While I don’t fully agree, you have a valid point. On the flip side, in the big picture this is about a small number of outlier situation. I don’t hear anyone asking about how many crimes are prevented BECAUSE of phone security and privacy.

Reason we do not hear about the prevented crimes on any security device or process, cannot quantify the results. How many home burgeries are prevented by deadbolts, for example. Your point is valid, Security has a plus side as noted by many on here.
 
Sounds good, but it might be even nicer to make it a user-definable time period. If I’m at home and physically syncing or backing up/restoring to a computer then I might want to set it to an hour or more, but otherwise I think instantly locking the lightning port's data connections (or even just disabling them completely) would be a good option to have.
I originally thought that, too; but anything that can be "set" can more easily be "bypassed". If the timeout is "hard-coded" into the OS, then there is MUCH less of a chance that the timeout can be "hacked".

In the end, I think that 1 hour is too long; but I understand that Apple probably had long and contentious internal meetings about this very subject before deciding on the 1 hour, unmodifiable, "rules".
 
I think you may be right, otherwise they would have an option to securely erase the phone after X number of unsuccessful password attempts and perhaps even provide a way to have a password that would immediately erase the phone.

What happens if my kids get ahold of my phone and keep continually pressing the wrong passcode? Then I'm SOL and have to hope I have a backup done very recently to restore my phone?
 
And i

It all boils down to business-models.
Apple gats paid by selling hardware, not data. Apple sees great marketing in "privacy" and "protect yourself against law enforcement".

Nothing wrong with it, BTW. Apple is just a company making money.

Apple may not sell user data, but do they say whether they purchase and use data obtained by other companies?
 
Last edited:
Then if you do not like apple then why are you here? Also stick with Android then do not whinge when you get hacked BIG time! You say that Apple is too strict, well I find Android to relaxed and too lax. Kind of like a nightclub I worked in once. there was no checks on punters by the door staff and anyone could take anything into the club from drugs to knives. I lost count of the amount of times there was trouble and the cops had to be called in.
Would you like to go to a club like that? Nope i did not think so.
Enough said!
[doublepost=1528982041][/doublepost]

You totally missed the point, mate, possibly the only person. My post was a sarcastic demo of how Android die-hards whine right now, every time a smartphone topic arises. I started with a not too subtle, stuttering "But".

Read my other posts, I could be accused of the opposite of what you said.

I agree that people are confusing the law enforcements' legal demand to data sitting in iCloud with the illegal demand of accessing the iOS via a built-in back door and access the iPhone.
 
Does the one hour rule apply even when the phone is currently unlocked? For example, you unlock the phone and use it for over an hour. Does the USB access still go away?

Are Lightning audio/video docks and headphone adapters considered USB devices?
 
Apple may not sell user data, but do they say whether they purchase and use data obtained by other companies?

I suspect Apple does. Far too frequently I will buy an item (Samsung watch, B&O Headset, Roku, etc...) and I will suddenly have Apple advertisements / emails showing up for Apple products. Far to often for it to be coincidence.
 
I have couple non security related questions

1) Will cutting off communication stop the device from charging?
2) What if my iphone is sitting in a dock connected to a speaker or stereo system playing music? Will it stop playing music then?
 
Seems to me Apple is being desperate. Hey, we don't have anything magical left in our pipeline that will keep our fans/customer interested in buying our product. So let's divert their attention to this security issue so that they will feel safe with iPhone and will only buy iPhone. Because iPhone is the only thing that is selling and we can't think of anything beyond that!
 
Every single one of you who are being very negative towards law enforcement on this issue would be saying the complete opposite if a close relative of yours was killed and information in a locked phone could have prevented their death.

You would not be saying 'oh well, security is a must, sorry relative but security/privacy is more important than your life'.

I'll give an example:

A relative of Tim Cook's is making a bank deposit. An armed gang robs the bank and kills the relative. 2 months before the bank robbery, a minor player in the gang is caught but stays quiet the whole time. He has an iphone which is locked. It has the communications of all the gang on it and talk and talk of which bank they going to rob. Apple refuses to unlock the phone for law enforcement and all other unlocking methods have been prevented due to security updates.

The minor player is unknown to police, no criminal record, no known associates. The only way to know who the others are is by the data in the locked phone but police cannot do anything because Apple will not help them. Oh well relative, such is life.

If that was to happen Tim Cook would change Apple's security policy in a heart beat.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Septembersrain
Seems to me Apple is being desperate. Hey, we don't have anything magical left in our pipeline that will keep our fans/customer interested in buying our product. So let's divert their attention to this security issue so that they will feel safe with iPhone and will only buy iPhone. Because iPhone is the only thing that is selling and we can't think of anything beyond that!
You’re reaching. People have been saying Apple has “nothing in the pipeline” since Steve’s death in 2011, and yet Apple is selling more products than it ever has before. If there was nothing in the pipeline, why doesn’t Apple’s product line look identitical to 2011? Security is a legitimate product feature, by the way. Perhaps one of the most important. Not sexy maybe, but important.
 
Every single one of you who are being very negative towards law enforcement on this issue would be saying the complete opposite if a close relative of yours was killed and information in a locked phone could have prevented their death.

You would not be saying 'oh well, security is a must, sorry relative but security/privacy is more important than your life'.

I'll give an example:

A relative of Tim Cook's is making a bank deposit. An armed gang robs the bank and kills the relative. 2 months before the bank robbery, a minor player in the gang is caught but stays quiet the whole time. He has an iphone which is locked. It has the communications of all the gang on it and talk and talk of which bank they going to rob. Apple refuses to unlock the phone for law enforcement and all other unlocking methods have been prevented due to security updates.

The minor player is unknown to police, no criminal record, no known associates. The only way to know who the others are is by the data in the locked phone but police cannot do anything because Apple will not help them. Oh well relative, such is life.

If that was to happen Tim Cook would change Apple's security policy in a heart beat.

Not negative, lawful.
If the investigating LEOs can convince the DA/AG that a warrant to search the phone is needed, then they (LEO) can execute the warrant. If the warrant recipient elects not to abide then it become like any other event of this type. Say the search of an encrypted hard drive, a file written in code or an unknown language, or ...

I think many here are over thinking it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JRobinsonJr
As apposed to Android handset manufacturers whos phones have no security AND no new magical features...

Seems to me Apple is being desperate. Hey, we don't have anything magical left in our pipeline that will keep our fans/customer interested in buying our product. So let's divert their attention to this security issue so that they will feel safe with iPhone and will only buy iPhone. Because iPhone is the only thing that is selling and we can't think of anything beyond that!
 
Police work like subpoena phone records, issue search warrants for ones property, subpoena to listen into ones phone and remote conversations, that type of police work. Police work stops at ones iPhone today. All the above police work that has solved huge number of crimes an prevented many more, can easily be moved to ones iPhone. Thus, making police work nearly impossible, especially for crimes done by organized groups.

No one, except really stupid criminals would trust their phones. The point is, with the 100% monitoring that goes on today, no criminal is keeping incriminating evidence on their phones. And the 0.00001 percent that do, do not make it worth the loss of privacy. The wolf (as in the police) have cried too much. This has nothing to do with solving crimes.
 
...On the other hand if law enforcement has a legitimate warrant what do we do if there is information on the device that could save innocent lives like evidence that puts a serial killer away or stops a terrorist attack?...

Like you, I too won't give up my liberty for security.

In a sensible analysis of this, there's just no need for some superspy device to break into anybody's phones. We can greatly reduce crime and greatly increase personal and public safety if we just do a few things:

1. One piece of evidence all by itself will almost never put somebody away. If it's a serial killer and they're going to be put away, there will be tons of evidence from multiple sources and multiple crimes, and none of it needs to come from somebody's phone. To think that that "one critical piece" will be found on a smartphone is not only beyond simplistic; it may actually be a sign that somebody is watching too much bad network television.

2. I've said it many times. It's easy to stop terrorist attacks: Keep out the people who want to do us harm. Just don't let them in! The US has done this for dozens of decades. We should send home people who overstay their Visas. Don't allow people in from countries that hate us. Don't allow people in who have made comments in public or social media that show that they are a danger. Why do we feel the need to allow haters into our borders? Let's also require trade partners to adhere to some basic requirements.

If we do more of the right things and fewer of the dumb things, then it won't be necessary to break into people's phones to find some tiny piece of damning evidence that probably doesn't exist anyway, because those people will just be causing trouble in their own countries (or in those with lax immigration policies) and not mine!

3. There is no shortage of people who are convictable/convicted of serious crimes WITHOUT having to break into their phones. Because they get convicted! But they get off by way of weak judges and light prison sentences. Why not send them to prison for the length of time allowed by and dictated by law?

I'm not even advocating making the law stronger, no. Just make them serve their sentences in full. I'd pay for additional prison space if we could just have a court system with the b@lls to enforce current law! Anybody else willing to crowdfund a few more uncomfortable cots in the nearest supermax?

4. Stop punishing people for using violent force or deadly force in their own self defense or the defense of their families or others. This is much more of a problem in the UK, where you can get a 2 year sentence if you just pick up a stick to defend yourself from men with knives, or you get tried for murder because during his attack on you, you grabbed your home invader's weapon and happened to maim or kill him with it.

Blaming and punishing the victim is beyond stupid, but nobody in the UK can complain or they could be convicted of some kind of thought crime and still go to jail! Luckily for me, I can say it because don't live there and don't plan to visit any place where citizens are not free to defend their own lives and property. I am a free citizen in my country, not merely a subject without real rights.

It's simple. Don't let evil in your house. Or your country. And when it rears its ugly head, lock it up. And for God's sake, don't punish people for killing evil when it breaks into their house or attacks them on the street!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.