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DoJ Discovers 'Possible Method' for Unlocking iPhone, Asks Court to Delay Tuesday Hearing With Apple [Update: Postponed]

This seems to reek of something foul. Why am I the only one that thinks this is their way of saying to the public that your iPhones aren't safe from us ultimately damaging Apple's core value in the marketplace...

Suspicious.
 
LovingTeddy said:
Or iOS isn't as secure as Apple claims to be... Apple is just using this as PR...Apple will eventually forced to coporate... So all this noise is Apple trying to make people think Apple is the victim...
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Have you been reading the same article that I read? I doubt it. The FBI coming up with something new is "Apple trying to make people think Apple is the victim..."?
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Michael Scrip said:
Take my iPhone 6S Plus for example. It has the Secure Enclave which the iPhone 5C lacks. Would Apple even be able to flash new firmware on it?
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I think it's a separate question. Can Apple update the firmware on a locked phone? Don't know. But then the second question: By updating the firmware on a 6s, can Apple get around the safety features implemented in the Secure Enclave? I think that's the real protection, that even with new firmware, you can't get around the Secure Enclave.
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LizKat said:
Botched case, big time. They should have saved their war for a better case anyway, something like a kidnapping in progress. They thought the "terror" card would go over better I guess. Well they've used it now. So next up will be the "heartbroken" card. Hope they have better sense of how to play that one.
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A kidnapping case in progress - where the police has the phone of the kidnapper in their hands?
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ani4ani said:
Actually all of the polls showed public opinion wanted Apple to open the phone, the polls always showed that.

MacRumors is not representative of all public opinion
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You are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting what is happening.

People want to read what's on this phone (which is perfectly legitimate). People don't want the security of their iPhones to be broken. There are many people who say "Apple should open this phone". I haven't seen _one_ person who said "I realise that this will break the iPhone security, but reading the data on a killer's phone is more important than the security of millions of phones".

Not _one_ person who was informed about _all_ the facts wants Apple to open the phone.
 
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gnasher729 said:
I think it's a separate question. Can Apple update the firmware on a locked phone? Don't know. But then the second question: By updating the firmware on a 6s, can Apple get around the safety features implemented in the Secure Enclave? I think that's the real protection, that even with new firmware, you can't get around the Secure Enclave.
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Yeah... that's what was referring to.

Now we're talking about a piece of hardware that was specifically designed to keep the phone protected. That's a pretty big barrier!

I wonder what Apple is planning for the iPhone 7... or if they were doing one thing but decided to amp it up after the recent events?

I think Apple's ultimate goal is to make a phone that even they cannot break into.

So to amend my previous question... how close are we to that with the 6S already?
 
This is great news for both sides. I think a fine balance has to be made between maintaining a sense of privacy for 99.998% of the population and letting law enforcement do their job. This is that balance.

No precedent has been made but the FBI still gets the information they seek. Everyone wins.
 
sully54 said:
This is great news for both sides. I think a fine balance has to be made between maintaining a sense of privacy for 99.998% of the population and letting law enforcement do their job. This is that balance.

No precedent has been made but the FBI still gets the information they seek. Everyone wins.
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That entirely depends on what their method of breaking in is.
 
Knighstalker said:
There afraid the Judge's decision will go against them!
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Yup, and they're scared this will st a precedent, ruining future possibilities. They're going to say they found a solution and drop the case even bough they don't have a solution since its dropped, they won't have to report it. I guarantee we.ll be seeing something like this again in he future.
 
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Seems to me that the FBI lost the game of chicken.

Apple didn't back down and given the recent filings and public support, it seemed that the FBI was headed for defeat in a precedent setting case. So they drop it and live to fight another day. Once that precedent was set, it would be much harder for the FBI to win any future cases and unpopular for the government to create any laws against the ruling.

If the FBI are bluffing about having an alternate method of breaking into the phone, they're going to have to file it in court unless the they drop the case. If it's true that they can break in, Apple can plug the security hole in future iOS revisions. Apple's lawyers really have the FBI backed into a lose-lose corner. The only way out of this for them is to drop the case and conceal the exploit. Either way, this case is over (for now).
 
BvizioN said:
Why do you folks keep insisting on that? Was it not FBI who went public on this sending a court order to Apple? Did Apple ask for this? Com on, even a 3 year old person understand this.
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The FBI didn't even send a court order to Apple. Apple didn't learn about that court order from the FBI, or from the court, but from the news.
 
I guess they are giving up, accepting that this precedent cannot be set at this time and are lying about this method of breaking into the phone. They will trash it. And by not revealing how this made up method would work, they can come forward with another case down the road and say that the previous method does not work in this new case so they need Apple to assist.
 
thatanonymoususer said:
Apple sends out security patches all the time. There's a chance that whatever vulnerability this phone has is patched in the next version.
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That would be hilarious. FBI finds a security vulnerability in the iPhone 5c they have. They get into the phone and before they look at what's on the phone they see "oh. An update!"

Oops...
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rick3000 said:
I see two possibilities:

The FBI was under intense pressure to make this case go away due to the unexpected backlash directed at the government and the very likely possibility the FBI would lose, and in the next few weeks we hear, "We got what we needed, okay bye, please forget this ever happened."

Or, the FBI is playing theatrics to try and weaken the argument they are trying to set a precedent, by appearing to try and exercise all other possible options before asking Apple to help.

Either way the FBI looks incompetent.
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It blows me away the number of people that actually agree with the FBI. I figured a few might...I didn't think I would end up talking to people every single day that would get all emotional and shout "terrorism! We need to be safe! Anything to be safe!" That scares me
 
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The issue remains that Apple is never a few devices away from no longer able to defend its position. It's only a matter of time before the opinion shifts (even 2 weeks is a long time to assume no events would happen). In an ideal scenario this should have gone to the Congress; however with the election madness - it's probably not the right time yet.

In the EU, the attitude is much less favourable on privacy, in light of the migrant crisis and the terrorist attacks - the French legislator even wants to draft up legislations to jail tech executives for not opening up phones.
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/09/france-clears-bill-force-apple-unlock-iphones/

Meanwhile in the UK the government is trying to get a snooper charter bill enacted - with some of the similar powers. Sad days.
 
Obama called Cook and said, "Nice business you got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it." Cook asks engineers to behind scenes provide method of exploit off record. Cook makes public statements for theater.
 
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DTphonehome said:
In all likelihood, they have been able to access the data already with some sort of unauthorized method. They wanted Apple to break in for future precedent and to allow the data to be used as legal evidence if there's a trial.

They severely underestimated the public backlash against the request, so they decided to shelve it for now.
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I think all methods of breaking into secure data are considered unauthorised.

I'm 50/50 whether they are telling the truth and do have some new methods they are trying but still to delay the case anyway makes little sense if they still want to get access to the phone and other phones.

They played a dirty game trying to draw apple into a fight about national security, they probably thought they could persuade the public. I hope the FBI doesn't get into that phone and they loose the case.
 
gnasher729 said:
Have you been reading the same article that I read? I doubt it. The FBI coming up with something new is "Apple trying to make people think Apple is the victim..."?
[doublepost=1458621763][/doublepost]

I think it's a separate question. Can Apple update the firmware on a locked phone? Don't know. But then the second question: By updating the firmware on a 6s, can Apple get around the safety features implemented in the Secure Enclave? I think that's the real protection, that even with new firmware, you can't get around the Secure Enclave.
[doublepost=1458622096][/doublepost]
A kidnapping case in progress - where the police has the phone of the kidnapper in their hands?
[doublepost=1458622361][/doublepost]

You are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting what is happening.

People want to read what's on this phone (which is perfectly legitimate). People don't want the security of their iPhones to be broken. There are many people who say "Apple should open this phone". I haven't seen _one_ person who said "I realise that this will break the iPhone security, but reading the data on a killer's phone is more important than the security of millions of phones".

Not _one_ person who was informed about _all_ the facts wants Apple to open the phone.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1458650247][/doublepost]That was not my point. It was stated that public opinion supported Apples position, which was / is not the case. Everyone who has read the case is not the public opinion, but the opinion of those have read the case.
 
I remember back during one of the baseball PED scandals, a stat that stuck with me was the DOJ's winning percentage in trials. It was something like 95%.

So it's now obvious how they've obtained such a high winning percentage. They cherry pick cases that they're virtually guaranteed to win. If they smell a chance that they might lose, they back out, clumsily.

Anyways, it was becoming painfully obvious that the DOJ had no case as just about every law expert was saying last week that there was no case here to be won by the DOJ. Should not have been a surprise that the DOJ would drop the case.

I was actually hoping that the DOJ was arrogant enough to proceed and get their asses handed to them. That way, there wouldn't be another one of these situations for years. As such, the FBI/DOJ/POTUS will wait for the next terrorist attack as an opportunity to take away more of our liberties.

ft
 
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