I guess every terrorist has been put on notice they can use Apple devices to coordinate terrorist acts internationally? Obviously there’s a privacy issue, but Apple is obfuscating to put it bluntly — all to earn more (tax-free) profits worldwide including China. No, the FBI doesn’t need to have a tool to crack every password, but when Apple is presented a court order in a specific criminal case then Apple should crack the password and pass over the results to the FBI without obstacle. Since Apple or no one else can rely on the Chinese court system to protect human rights, then Apple China should either refuse to collaborate or get out of there.
“I guess every terrorist has been put on notice they can use Apple devices to coordinate terrorist acts internationally? “
Yes, let in terrorists who have jihadi crap on the facebook page. Promote a traitor like Hassan who they knew was emailing al Qeida. The Somali machete man at the restaurant last week was a non citizen who the FBI was watching for FOUR years as a terrorist risk.
But its all the fault of apple.
Go lick some boots clean and go back to sleep.
Are you REALLY this ignorant? Apple is not earning "tax free profits" and if you think they are you are falling for the LIBERAL propaganda from the DEMOCRATS.
Apple is either they largest or one of the two or three largest US tax payers of Corporate Income taxes according to the IRS depending on the tax year. In 2012, for example, Apple by far, paid more US Corporate Income Taxes than any other business, and in fact paid $1 out of every $40 of US Corporate Business Taxes collected that year. Apple's effective US Tax Rate normally averages around 27%. Alphabet/Google's US Tax Rate averages under 17%.
The money Apple has off-shore is not untaxed. It has already been taxed in the jurisdictions where it was earned. Apple has to keep it off-shore because the archaic US Tax laws make it only one of two nations on earth that tax the ALREADY income taxed profits earned off-shore when they are brought home. The other nation is a land-locked, African tyranny with zero international businesses. Our businesses and even our individuals when they bring their off-shore earnings home must pay a 35% TAX on top of the income tax they have ALREADY paid on those funds. These are like being forced to take a one-third cut of your SAVINGS to bring them into the United States. It's an insane practice that cripples our companies when they want to bring their own earned capital home.
Right now, Apple can tell China, for example, they cannot "Crack" the password on their devices. If the FBI forces Apple to crack the password for them, Apple would be forced to crack that same password for China, as well. There are FAR MORE ramifications for this than just this one case. . . Many of them international.
There are 800,000,000 people dependent on the STRONG security of Apple iPhones. Add in iPads and iPod touches, and it's ONE BILLION. Security is not just about law enforcement. It's about credit/debit card fraud. ApplePay is secure against such fraud. Allow this "Crack" to get into the wild, that's GONE!
This has very little to do with terrorism. Terrorists can and do use "Burner" phones. That is what the San Bernardino couple actually used. They both had two burner phones bought for a few bucks. They DESTROYED them before embarking on their shooting rampage for their Satanic Allah. They destroyed their computers, pulling the hard drives and smashing them separately (I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't pour fuel oil over them, as that is an advised method of dissolving the magnetic substrate). They then DUMPED the remains of these burner phones, the hard drives, and even the hulk of their destroyed computers in a lake. That's what the divers were looking for.
Why was this County owned iPhone 5C not destroyed? I suggest because there's not a damned thing on it that is worth finding. He probably used it only for work and used the burner phones for plotting, bad terrorist guy things. There is no way he'd put anything incriminating on a phone owned by his employer that he doesn't know whether or not they have access to data on. The number is their's not his. The emails are their's not his. Etc.
The other day, a caller on the Rush Limbaugh show said he worked on phones returned on exchanges for the carriers. He implied that even wiped iPhones still had user data on them, contacts, photos, notes, emails, etc. He did not actually say such a thing, but he said he had no problem getting around passcodes, which showed me he was NOT talking about iPhones.
It is well known that Android phones cannot be fully erased. . . But iPhones are easy to fully erase. Resetting an iPhone back to factory condition actually DOES erase all user data and leaves NOTHING behind. Nor can you "get around" the passcode as the caller implied. If the iPhone has not been unlocked before being traded in, it will be useless to a new buyer. It takes about three minutes to completely WIPE an Apple iPhone back to factory pristine blank condition.
What I am getting at here, is that it is entirely possible that this iPhone 5C has absolutely NOTHING on it. That it was not necessary to destroy it because 1) it was his work phone and he never used it for anything nefarious, and 2) just in case he had said something inadvertently while using it, it's trivial to completely erase it, and then put back his passcode.
For a terrorists who planned to never return, certain they were never going to need their phones again, so much so they destroyed their others and their computers, it is logical to think they would have also destroyed the data on the one they had left.
I heard that this iPhone was found in the car where they were shot. I suspect they may have kept this one, without data, to use as a GPS system for their getaway.