This protects Apple from being forced by some other government to provide the same back door. If FBI, or Chinese government spooks, can break the code, fine. But China can’t force Apple to provide the back door as a condition of sale.
Well, they could still, I suppose. We’ll see. But for sure if they created the back door, China could certainly demand it, and so could every other government with a market big enough to matter.
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I’d say this will mark a steep and fast decline in Apple and the cult it fostered.
Or, maybe the Feds came to the conclusion there was not likely anything particularly valuable in that phone beyond what the NSA had already collected, and just decided to claim they had already hacked it, so “never mind”.
Roflol... OR NOT.
Apple wins
Government hacks loose.
I’m not seeing the problem.
One device, an obsolete model, using a medium security technique long suspected of a weakness, was after tremendous wrangling & threats & money cracked by a business specializing in such forensic work, likely involving specialized hardware.
We do not disparage locks just because locksmiths can, with training tools & practice, open some.
Tim Cook better cook up some CROW PIE. He messed up big time on this. Apple stocks will plunge now as they see anyone can crack the code to the iPhone. Good ploy Tim Cook.
This is not a certainty at all. How do we know the FBI didn't simply remember the password they had changed after seizing the phone? I wouldn't expect them to tell the public the truth about how they accessed it.
Some behind the scenes quid pro quo is my guess.
Poorly written and ill conceived laws are eventually tools of oppression.
I side with Apple philosophically and grudgingly side with them in practice for nothing goes misused and abused by this set of federal politicians and their parasitic bureaucrats.
But make no mistake. These companies, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple et al will all sell you out with no thought for you. What they want and why the hold out is is for ‘cover’. They put up a visible fight while surreptitiously giving in as long as there is no paper trail.
It is just as likely that a Apple slipped them what they need under the table through a 3rd party than a 3rd party had it cracked already.
This is a good article but I challenge the statement that the US Govt would be breaking the 1986 law about computer hacking.
There have been court-recognized and decisioned cases where “a clear and present danger” or “imminent danger” takes precedence over normal laws. This is especially true in taking police action immediately without a warrant because someone was in “imminent danger” of being killed and there wasn’t enough time to physically get a warrant for entry or anything else.
When you are dealing with terrorism, as well as with kidnappers and serial killers, time is of the essence in which to act to save lives and prevent further acts of murder and destruction.
The Belgians learned the hard way about putting stupid limitations on their raids re the times in which you could or could not conduct them.
IF they had acted earlier, meaning conducting night raids on suspected terrorist houses/apartments, then they probably could have stopped the bombings at the airport and maybe even the bus.
Try to tell the families of the victims as well as the maimed survivors that the “law” prevented the police from acting quickly despite a real “imminent danger”.
Tim Cook of Apple is a bastard and should be fired by the Board of Directors, but they won’t because they are “putting profits before people” (the old leftist/Marxist chant) and are cowards.
It is time that sane Americans woke up and smelled the smoke of terrorist explosions, and did something about it, from getting rid of reds and socialists and liberals in Congress and state/local politics, boycotting businesses who put profits above the safety of fellow Americans, and getting rid of Marxist/jihadist professors who protect our enemies from reasonable law enforcement surveillance.
That also means stopping donations to the ACLU which is, today, a parallel legal entity to those of the old Soviet-directed Communist Party USA (i.e. the old cited CP front, the National Lawyers Guild and its’ offshoot, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the other cited CPUSA legal front, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Union - NECLC).
Also, donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center should be stopped. They are so far left I’m having a hard time finding where to place them between the NLG/CCR and NECLC.
There are as much a threat to our safety as are the terrorists themselves because the SPLC covers up for them, just as does CAIR and many of the pro-Palestine organizations.
The family members and neighbors of the San Bernadino terrorists didn’t “see something, report it” to the police because the groups above cowered them into inaction with threats of lawsuits, boycotts, protests/harassment, etc.
The enemies of America operate here with near impunity because of the American Left and its ally, the Islamic jihadists and supporters are able to cower most of us into inaction, aided and abetted by a totally incompetent, biased and ignorant Mainstream Media.
It is time to take back our country, and if we have to squash an Apple to do so, fine. I like apple sauce.
We either take a stand now, or give in to the reds, black extremists and Islamic hordes now running amok in our schools and campuses, courts, and streets.
Ferguson was nothing compared to what is being planned. I was in the midst of a similar major protest movement many years ago, and out of it came the Weathermen despite both my warning and that of a congressional committee about it what the Marxist left was going to do.
The media ignored Congress and the FBI, academia turned cowardly and gave into the Marxist thugs, and many police departments were totally unprepared for what was happening.
Forewarned is forearmed. I would trust the Boy Scouts to more “Be Prepared” for trouble than our present Marxist-run and ruined government and most Democrat-run state and local governments.
We MUST UNITE against our common enemies, not against each other. They want us to fight amongst ourselves, leading to bloody pyrrhic victories that bled us dry, all the while unifying in a Marxist/black extremist lockstep that Hitler and Stalin would be proud of.
2016 is the year in which America’s freedom is saved and preserved, or lost, possibly for all time.
Interesting, but the phone was not owned by the Muslime. It was county property and the county gave permission to the search. And using county property you have no expectation of privacy.
FBI lost too. They have cried wolf. When Apple gets the security/encryption right and FBI really does need their help to break into the device the American people will not be on their side.
I’m glad Apple stood strong. And hopefully will fix the security of the device making it harder for them to break into.
apple wins. the people win.
apple’can always’improve their security, roll it out, and then fedgov is screwed for awhile again.
What revisionist history! Apple made a federal case out of it?? It was the f-in fedgov who took the dispute pubic dumba**.
Horsefeathers.
Normally, I consider Apple to be a bunch of loathsome toads. In this case, I tip my hat to them ... they did right.
Apple did win. They didn’t have to make a back door and the FBI realized they would lose that fight in the court room. The FBI never needed a back door to obtain the data in the phone.
I don’t understand how this all makes Apple look so bad. Some government hack shows up on your doorstep with a court order and you’re supposed to just do free work for them no questions asked? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Tim Cook is a toolbox but I understand his stance on this. He probably told them, “Go talk to the NSA. They can tell you how often you order pizza and what kind of porno you like.”