Posted on 03/21/2016 4:26:24 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The FBI just filed a motion to delay Tuesday's hearing in the San Bernardino iPhone case, claiming that an "outside party" may be able to help it break into the phone without Apple's help. The motion comes after weeks of escalation tension in the case with Apple, the FBI, and other stakeholders arguing the case in public before it reached courts. It's not clear who is helping the FBI or what the new method entails, but it may not coming from the NSA, despite speculation that the intelligence agency has the ability up its sleeve; today's filing suggests that the help is coming from "outside the US government."
"As the FBI continued to conduct its own research, and as a result of the worldwide publicity and attention on this case, others outside the US government have continued to contact the US government offering avenues of possible research," the filing states.
If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for assistance from Apple.
It's not clear if this is just a tactic to delay the government's effort to compel Apple to create a backdoor that would help it bypass the iPhone's defensive mechanisms; the "worldwide publicity and attention" the government cites was highlighted on stage today when Apple opened its latest keynote with righteous remarks on its fight against the FBI. But the motion implies that the FBI would drop the case if it's able to break in with this third-party assistance; "If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for assistance from Apple," the filing states.
Apple was ready to bring out its big guns on Tuesday. Eric Neuenschwander, Apple's head of product security and privacy, was scheduled to appear in court, and filed a declaration last week arguing that the FBI's request could have wide-reaching effects on security in systems used by major technology companies. And over the past month, Apple has furiously presented its case to the public, seizing many opportunities to portray the fight with the FBI as a fight over Constitutional rights.
If the court accepts the FBI's request to delay, the agency plans to file a "status report" by April 5th — so we should find out soon if the government's new mysterious iPhone hack works.
The idiots at the FBI probably believed John Mcafee’s nonsense.
Pinging dayglored, Shadow Ace, and ThunderSleeps for their ping lists. . .
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Maybe AT&T Labs can help them out.
Oh wait. They’re gone huh?
The feebs just won’t learn, will they?
I think by law NSA can not release date until it is 6 months old by “law”.
Fart Barf abd Itch blinked. Lol
LMAO!!
Something about this Apple case doesn’t pass the smell test.
Remember when the government sued Microsoft? I’m thinking it’s the same kind of malice directed at Apple by using the power of the Fed to cause harm to a mega corporation.
This iPhone is going down the memory hole. Just a hunch.
You may be right. They may have realized they've bitten off more than they can chew.
> You may be right. They may have realized they've bitten off more than they can chew.
Or maybe, if they actually DO succeed in breaking it without Apple's help, they will have damaged Apple's claim of unbreakability. The FBI and CIA hate private encryption. If they can get the public to believe that Apple's (and all the others') encryption isn't really all that unbreakable, they will have pulled a more important coup against tech companies than if they forced it through the courts.
Color me suspicious. I think they're now going to claim they broke into the iPhone, WHETHER OR NOT THEY ACTUALLY SUCCEED, and of course they're not going to release the results to the public.
This is trouble.
Sorry, PtBOR, meant to ping you on my reply above.
Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!
Seriously, I've got $5 that says what happens next is one of three things:
I think your 3rd option is close. My only difference is that, as I said a month ago; I think this is all an FBI ruse. They had that phone hacked and exploited within a few hours of finding it. The haggling that’s been going on has had 2 purposes. 1. To get Apple to cave, if possible, and have EASY access to all iphones.
And 2. To sandbag the muzzies into a false sense of security, that they can put anything they want on their iphones, and it’s safe and secure from American Law and Security Enforcement eyes.
4. NSA has had the data and due to laws or distrust of the FBI hasn’t shared the data. In the meantime, wet teams from the CIA/MI6, Russia and the French have been wiping out the foreign buddies of the San Bernardino killers. Those mop up jobs are about done, so now the data can be released.
News of this possible release will cause the about to be exposed jihadists in America to panic and try to leave.
I agree. The simple solution for the average person wishing privacy is to increase their passcode to six digits, or even better, select a complex passcode of alphanumeric characters and go for eight or more and add some symbols. Those are effectively unbreakable in any realtime scenario. Think a trillion years or more to brute force all possible keys.
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