Posted on 10/25/2015 6:38:49 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Earlier this week, Apple stated that it would be nearly impossible for it to access the data on a passcode-locked iOS device running iOS 8 or later. The company also noted, however, that even if it were possible, it would not feel comfortable doing so as to not tarnish the trust it shares with its customers. The Department of Justice has now dismissed that argument, saying that Apple should be required to unlock encrypted data because iOS is “licensed, not sold” to customers (via DailyDot).
“Apple designed, manufactured, and sold [the phone] that is the subject of the search warrant,” the government told U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein. “But that is only the beginning of Apple’s relationship to the phone and to this matter. Apple wrote and owns the software that runs the phone, and this software is thwarting the execution of the warrant.”
The specific case in which the U.S. government needs an iPhone unlocked relates to executing a search warrant on a suspect indicted for possession of methamphetamine. Apple argues that decrypting a phone in one case would set a precedent that would only burden the company in the future, taxing its resources, employees, software, and equipment. “This burden,” Apple said, “increases as the number of government requests increases.”
The DOJ, of course, rejected this argument, saying that Apple shows no attempt to quantify the burden of which it speaks, nor does it show any evidence.
Apple also argues that aiding government requests for user data would hurt its reputation to the public due to the level to which sensitivity to digital privacy has risen. The company says that this harm to its reputation to could have a lasting economic impact. Earlier this week, Tim Cook spoke out against software backdoors, again voicing Apple’s support for privacy for its customers
As you would expect, the DOJ also rejects this argument, again saying Apple provided no concrete evidence to support its claims.
The government rejected this argument, saying that Apple offered no concrete evidence that reputational concerns constituted an “undue burden” as defined by law.
At the heart of this is an obsession by the government with having access to everything. The fact that there is secure crypto in the hands of the public drives them mad.
Well, what shouldn't the government know about you? What are you trying to hide? ;-)
My interpretation: They cannot unlock iPhones running iOS 8 or later, it is impossible. . . but can open iPhones running iOS 7 or lower. For keeping equality among their customers, they would not feel comfortable treating Apple customers differently.
Alternatively, we are reading "lawyer talk" equivocating to not say what is really the the truth: Apple cannot really unlock the iPhone but don't dare tell the judge they can't for fear
Not that I know of. . . Apple's encryption is in the hardware. . . and if Apple did such a thing as you suggest and it was learned by their customers, the lawsuits could bankrupt even Apple's almost $800 Billion Capitalization. Not to mention the criminal complaints under the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002.
Our government wants to spy on us by a request rather than a warrant. Apple to their credit is doing what it can to make the government get a warrant. Google on the other hand probably gives the government everything. Looks out here comes CISA to rob you of even more rights!!!
The Police State marches on.
Countdown to tyranny. It’s coming and it isn’t a long way off either.
WTF?
Did you not read the excerpt where the apple rep said they thought it would be “nearly impossible” for them to decrypt the information.
How you would equate that to a “secret backdoor” I have no clue?
Love your PI comment. Our government just power mad and ignorant enough to think they can do anything by fiat. Change physics, change human nature, change the color of the sky.
Tyrants will be tyrants.
I've read what Apple actually told the judge in its filing. . . and it did not quibble. It said it was "impossible" to decipher any iOS encryption after iOS 8 was incorporated into an iPhone. I also am completely familiar with the technology and the math involved. What you are seeing is a lawyer arguing the case from his understanding which is, to say the least, not much. Here is what Apple actually told the judge in its brief:
Apple tells U.S. judge 'impossible' to unlock new iPhones — BY NATE RAYMOND — Reuters — September 25, 2015Apple Inc (AAPL.O) told a U.S. judge that accessing data stored on a locked iPhone would be "impossible" with devices using its latest operating system, but the company has the "technical ability" to help law enforcement unlock older phones.
Apple's position was laid out in a brief filed late Monday, after a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York, sought its input as he weighed a U.S. Justice Department request to force the company to help authorities access a seized iPhone during an investigation.
In court papers, Apple said that for the 90 percent of its devices running iOS 8 or higher, granting the Justice Department's request "would be impossible to perform" after it strengthened encryption methods.
Those devices include a feature that prevents anyone without the device's passcode from accessing its data, including Apple itself.
. . .
Apple told U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein it could access the 10 percent of its devices that continue to use older systems, including the one at issue in the case. But it urged the judge to not require it to comply with the Justice Department's request.
"Forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand," Apple's lawyers wrote. . .
The issue is not at all that Apple is not using really strong encryption, but that some Apple customers have not upgraded to an iOS that uses it, and Apple is loathe to set a precedent that lets the government require a company to expend whatever amount of its time and treasury is required to open one of its devices, regardless of what is actually in it, on a fruitless fishing expedition. It will be fruitless on iOS 8 devices and it will be an endless, never ending, bottomless, well into which the company would be expected to poor its time and money for no results.
They actually provided scientific expert evidence backing Apple's position from top cryptographers in the field, attesting that breaking into a 256-bit AES encryption was not something that could be done in anything but astronomical time frames.
Since any data on the iOS device has to be decrypted on the iOS device, no a hammer won't do much good. . . nor can downloading the raw data work and then trying it on a supercomputer. Same reason. The key and UUID as well as the algorithm that converts the passcode into the key are kept inside the processor in the iOS device as a one-way hash code to unlock the device. The only way to even start the unlock process is to do it on the device.
Still won't work, because it is not reading the fingerprints, it is reading the subcutaneous ridge patterns under the fingerprints. . . and it has to be still living finger.
Would it not also be true that agreeing to the government's demand in this case would invite the inevitable next step: That all future devices be built with the dread "back door"?
Do what I do. . . and did. . . go to the primary sources rather than a report from an ignorant reporter reading something into it that was not said in the original court filing. Read what I posted above about "impossible" and "90% of all iPhones being on iOS 8 or later" which are impossible to break encryption on. . . and get back to me about your cluelessly assumed "secret backdoors."
That's the government's end game. . .
without any back doors,
I think they did say that, I think what they are resisting is building a back door into the hardware.
Apple's not the one using the strong encryption.
Rather, it's Apple's users who are using the strong encryption Apple has provided them. Apple has deliberately locked itself out of the actual act of encryption.
The gubmint wants Apple to hack its customers by breaking the product it is selling. That could take the form of leaking the user's key somehow or changing the protocol such that Apple enters the key on behalf of the user. Anything that might put data responsive to a subpoena within Apple's reach.
The morons would like to resurrect the Clipper Chip, which flamed out back in the mid nineties.
But Apple has made it impossible for even Apple to access that information so it could leak any of it. There is no means to access it, without first breaking into the iPhone. That's sort of the Catch 22 of the problem. They have to get into the phone to see the data they have to have to get into the phone. Kind of gets them chasing their own tails. Finally, if you provide a backdoor for the good guys, a bribe to the right person inside the good guys' departments, and the bad guys will know the backdoor, and how to get in, two days after the good guys know it. That's just the way the world works.
I should have expected the reporter to get things entirely confused.
I read the excerpt about the impossibility of decrypting the devices, and I also read the excerpts about how it would be bad policy to require Apple to decrypt the device.
What the reporter failed to make clear is that these were arguments about two different classes of device. The new devices cannot be decrypted. The older devices can be, but doing so would be bad policy.
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