I don't understand where you get trivialising from. When we see people hurt of course we feel empathy for them.
This has nothing to do with that, the discussion is about whether it's reasonable that the government robs people of all their freedoms and liberties by leveraging emotional reactions of fear, caused by comparatively a very small amount of people being hurt in very dramatic ways.
The emotional reactions of fear we see displayed in society are the results of a very cynical manipulation of peoples perceptions.
But the same people that call for the abolishment of civil liberties and freedoms based on a few deaths trivialise the death of one million Iraqis. Or the phosphorus bombings of Palestinian children by a criminal apartheid government. Or the insane treatment of the Kurds by the nutcase Erdogollum. The governments doing those things are involved in genocide, their leaders should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. Instead it's peoples freedoms and liberties that are put on trial.
There is no proportion or logic at all in this, just blind sheeplike emotional reaction based on absolute trust in governments that behaves like gangsters.
There are so many causes of deaths in the US alone on daily basis that receive such a disproportionately small reaction to. I strongly doubt that the relatives and friends of the 27 daily deaths from drunk drivers are any less sad or horrified over their loss. This amounts to 10,000 people every year. Where is the outcry, where is the sense of proportion. I venture to say that had 27 people died by "terrorist" hands today, the news could not stop talking about it for a week.
There is a proposal in California to help stop this daily tragedy, by installing lock out alcohol detector in convicted drunk driver cars. Any whiff of alcohol prevents the vehicle from starting. In the test counties this has been tried in over 1 million start prevent actions have occurred. How many lives has this already saved.
Of course an entire branch of government spending billions of dollars a year has not been created. As has been the case for "terror". If lives are truelly what is important the breath test lock seems to be far more effective. Of course without the publicity.
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They didn't brute force it...
Last year a hacker sold a private exploit to an Israeli company. They hired this company to exploit a security bug. We don't know which one and probably never will. I remember that at the time, the Israeli company paid an 'undisclosed amount' for this hack, and they were the highest bidder. There's a BIG market for grey hats... not all hackers produce 'jailbreaks' for the public.
Put simply... they likely 'jailbroke' the device using a highly technical exploit, enabled root, set their own root password and then copied all the (now) unencrypted data off the phone for analysis by the police.
One can presume there are many other bugs that could be exploited. There will always be this kind of 'back door'. It's just that it's easier for Apple to find them because they know what has technique is being used and can scan through the code for iOS without any decompiling.
Apple were NEVER asked to program iOS with a 'master key'... as Cook suggested they were being asked to do. This wouldn't have given access to CURRENT data anyway.
I say it was a brute force attack. Check out the UFED unlock device code video in this article. This is a brute force attack, trying codes after the auto erase function is disabled by the device. They say they try codes late in video for hours to find correct unlock code. Once that is done, it's same as the owner unlocking it. The phone is open for FBI to explore.
Isn't that an iPhone 5c in the video?
http://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-cellebri...king-iphone-are-old-friends-2-million-2342283
Plus this article shows FBI and Cellebrite are old friends using them for $2 million worth of hacks in past. Therefore when FBI director James Comey testified under oath to congress, he was lying when he said they had tried everything and only Apple could help. How much confidence does that garner, when director of FBI lies in front of congress. Shouldn't the Director of Justice Department, his boss he reports to, indict him for purjury. Just plain sad.
