This is Apple news I can laugh about. Hopefully, they will course correct their software bug issues and be an even bigger PITA to government agencies.
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FBI Forensic Examiner Stephen Flatley Calls Apple 'Jerks' and 'Evil Geniuses' for Encrypting iPhones
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I support the FBI.... In their hiring of mathematicians, cryptographers, and technologists who will do their absolute best to circumvent the encryption of devices obtained via warrant or other legitamate means.
I support Apple... In their attempts to make my device as secure as possible, and so that nobody other than myself can access my data.
I do not support legal tomfoolery, backdoor authoritarianism, name calling, or other half witted attempts to make my data insecure.
I support Apple... In their attempts to make my device as secure as possible, and so that nobody other than myself can access my data.
I do not support legal tomfoolery, backdoor authoritarianism, name calling, or other half witted attempts to make my data insecure.
He's good at roping all of you in.
The truth is we've been selling the FBI and others tools since 2008 that allow simple investigation on iOS.
But keep thinking you're safe if it makes you feel good.
So I'm curious, if I hand you my locked iPhone X (on which I have a 15 character pass code and have configured it to wipe after 10 failed attempts) you can unlock it and/or read all data on the device? I do not use iCloud for backups, only local and they are encrypted (as is the drive the are stored to and is the cloud solution that I keep off site). What can you do to my device?
Government snoops its citizens routinely = Government I no longer support.
BTW...this story and his statements sound like a ploy to make it sound like they can't get into our phones, but most likely can. Hence, the good guy/bad guy simplistic rhetoric.
I am sure Tim was told some time ago "for reasons of national security"... and complied.
BTW...this story and his statements sound like a ploy to make it sound like they can't get into our phones, but most likely can. Hence, the good guy/bad guy simplistic rhetoric.
I am sure Tim was told some time ago "for reasons of national security"... and complied.
Do you have any idea how easy it is to get a warrant? People actually think that having to get a warrant is some kind of preventative measure...?
And my concern along that point is this: FISA. It's abused. It's used in ways that were never intended. It's used "Legally" to spy on people that never should have been. Like him or not, people involved in the Trump campaign had their names revealed in 'leaks' to the press following discovery through "legal" FISA warrants.
Your premise is that because it requires a warrant, it can't be abused. But this is government, and government abuses its privileges all the time, precisely as was done in these FISA cases where a 'warrant' was issued, quite possibly based on fabricated intelligence created just to gain a FISA warrant.
And that never even gets to the core issue which is: once a company purposefully creates a vulnerability to be used by law enforcement, that vulnerability exists to be exploited by anyone. How many exploits have been revealed to Apple and other companies by outside entities that were never even known to exists? And now we want to intentionally CREATE a point of entry that we're going to call "secret" and expect that others aren't going to find a way to circumvent it?
It's creating a key to the door that risks burning down the house.
Man, if he is that steamed at Apple I wonder what kind of choice words he has for the Founders for adding Amendments 5-6 to the U.S. Constitution. Where did the FBI recruit this guy from? KGB?
What would you suggest then? Not have companies create such tools? Not have the government have the ability to do things like gather information on child pedophiles, cyber criminals, and terrorists because those same tools may be used in not as great of ways?
The abuses are far far fewer than the legal uses.
We sat down with the iOS security team in 2008 and showed them our product. We were looking for their blessing and instead they claimed it wasn't a big deal to be able to pull passwords, browsing history, wifi network history, location history, contacts, text messages, phone records, app data, and much more from the iPhone. So instead Apple's government sales guys became our friends as we worked together to sell these tools to governments around the world. Worked out great.
And you would know this....how?
William Binney, the designer of the surveillance scheme under Bush resigned in protest that the NSA (the agency he was employed by) was clearly using the program to surveil EVERYTHING during the Bush administration. The program funding and complexity has only grown since then, which he has been speaking out against ever since.
I’ll take the word of the guy that actually designed over an assertion that it’s not being abused that has nothing behind it.
2 months is much too short. Needs to be 200 years. Apple needs to make it stronger. Also iCloud needs to be just as encrypted as the phones. That's a major security issue and a backdoor into your phone. Phones should be just as private as your mind and shouldn't be able to incriminate you. The FBI is just lazy and wants everything handed to them instead of doing real investigative work.
You ask a good and tough question, and it boils down to this: What are we willing to give up in order to feel 'safe'. And then the follow-up question: does creating such an entryway into our private lives actually live up to the claims?
So, did pedophiles and terrorists live and operate successfully prior to smart phones computers and tablets? I've lived with reports of terrorism as long as I've known, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that they adapt. That's why we have a recent wave of people running over groups with large trucks, right? It was an adaptive way to circumvent what HSA, FBI, CIA and others began looking for as agencies.
Are we really so naive to think that evil people aren't going to learn to adapt to this change, too? So do we continue to open up more and more of our lives every time bad people choose a new strategy?
I for one don't want to go down that path. I just don't buy the rationale, "Well, if it just stops one..." when that means that we potentially create as many victims of other crimes just so that we can prevent a few victims of crime of another type.
Proof? And not just a Tim Cook press statement (like "we care about the mac, we have great products in the pipeline"). Apple cares about profit. That is all - right now supposed support for privacy is an asset that can be sold to the public.
From Apple itself: "Thousands of times every month, we give government information about Apple's customers and devices [...] Strong encryption does not eliminate Apple's ability to give law enforcement metadata or any of a number of other very useful categories of data."
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Yes, iCloud metadata.....which still isn't access to the phone. By design Apple has no ability to unlock the phone as the key is generated (and destroyed) when the phone is assembled in the factory. They don't have the keys, they can give iCloud metadata but they have no technical capability to break the encryption on the phone, by design.
Just read the Security Whitepaper if you want more actual technical information on Apple's security paradigm.
Then there's absolutely nothing I can say which will change your mind. Have a nice day.
You didn't even try....probably because you just put out an assertion without any way to back it up.
I'll take actual information over platitudes any day.
Have a good one.
I wonder what will Apple do if China tells them to weaken the security of IPhone. Will Apple say "screw you China?"?
*looks at calendar*
It's, uh, 2018 now. Has it changed? Are they up to speed on iOS 11 and the current crop of iPhones?
I can tell you that with the information we now have access to, we're putting far more pedophiles in jail than before. The current belief is that the number of them hasn't necessarily grown with the internet (though it has made access easier) but we can now identify them with greater ease (before it was an even more underground network used to exchange pictures and other material).
Global terrorism has certainly grown in the past 10+ years. Technology has allowed us to track many terrorist, understand their movements, gain insights into their operations, and stop many attacks before they happen. Without it, it's 100% certain that we would have seen far more lives lost and terrorist cells would be far larger than they are now.
So we must weigh things. Are we better off with or without such tech? It can certainly be used for bad but it's most frequently used for good. Is the loss of thousands of additional lives worth some additional privacy (which is silly to believe as the bad guys will still have access to these tools even if we block ourselves from using them)? Is it worth additional kids being molested, raped, and killed in turn for some additional privacy?
Sadly, we only see reporting on such tools when they're used for bad. We don't ever see reports touting how an iOS forensics tool was used to find a little boy who had been kidnapped and raped for the past 2 years by a pedophile. We don't see reports of how a forensic tool was used to help uncover information that lead to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan which was preparing for an attack on a sports stadium in the UK. It's much bigger headlines (read: dollars) to report on when these tools are used for bad, as that sparks outrage which drives more traffic to these sites and more money for them.
I heard that you murdered three of your friends in high school. Feel free to disprove it.
See? Accusations are easy. This idea that an accusation proves guilt is a tool for fools.
The way we go about extracting the data is the same now as it was back then. They haven't changed it.
Same deal on the macOS side. We sell a flash drive that can be plugged into a Mac (actually works on Windows and Linux too) and it'll pull out all your Keychain passwords, browsing history, contacts, wifi network history, location data, and a ton more, in addition to copying and analyzing files the investigator specifies ahead fo time (the idea is you configure it ahead of time to carry out the tasks you want and then can give it to anyone in the field to run and bring the data back to you). It doesn't even leave a trace that it was run (it's forensically sound). Apple hasn't done anything to prevent it (other than a couple minor changes needed which took an afternoon of adjustment and testing to work around with some of the major OS updates).