Posted on 08/17/2018 3:54:09 PM PDT by Mariner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc (FB.O) to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance.
The previously unreported case in a federal court in California is proceeding under seal, so no filings are publicly available, but the three people told Reuters that Facebook is contesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand.
The judge in the Messenger case heard arguments on Tuesday on a government motion to hold Facebook in contempt of court for refusing to carry out the surveillance request, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Facebook and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
The Messenger issue arose in Fresno, California, as part of an investigation of the MS-13 gang, one of the people said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Personally I see the US Government surveillance apparatus as the greater threat.
And Facebook is "like dude, the NSA already has the keys".
But LEO wants access ad-hoc and willy nilly. That way they can reverse engineer their case in a legal fashion once something illegal is detected.
That’ll really help their stock price [/sarc].
Heard on Hannity this afternoon, that APPLE THE Defender of Freedom UNLOCKED THEIR CLOUD SERVICES FOR MUELLER.
But the same cannot be said for the Apple using Cali terrorists.
what's up with that
Keep MS13holes out of this country altogether and there is no problem.
I seriously doubt that. Please provide a substantive link, otherwise I call BS.
You must be a good rotten machine. One the state can use. These guys have no business operating outside the federal game plan.
What is unreasonable? Does current culture define it?
“documents recovered pursuant to a court-authorized search of Manafort’s iCloud account,” according to a declaration from an FBI agent involved in the case.
Facebook was likely started by the central stupid agency.
FV seems to be a continuation of Lifelog, an operation the government terminated in the same day Fakebook was started.
That warrant is limited to Manafort.
I think you're misinterpreting that "court-ordered search". There's no indication whatsoever that Apple "unlocked their cloud services", as you put it. There's not even any indication that Apple was asked to do so, since it doesn't mention Apple. But if they were asked, they'd have to say no.
Instead, I suspect that the court ordered Manafort to open his iCloud account, which of course only he can do, since Apple accounts cannot be "unlocked" by Apple, by definition. The account holder has a private encryption key that is not available to Apple, and that key is required to decrypt the user's data.
With all due respect, it sounds to me like you misunderstand the nature of Apple's storage encryption scheme. What you describe is not possible without Apple building an encryption breaker -- doing that would completely undermine the years of trust they've built up with hundreds of millions of customers who hold the only private keys to their own accounts.
Do you really think nailing Manafort is worth that much to Apple? Nah, not a chance.
Prosecutors were able to obtain the encrypted chats because, as Motherboard notes, Manafort was backing up information from his WhatsApp to Apple’s iCloud, where data is not encrypted and is thus available to police armed with a valid search warrant.That says that he was foolishly not using Apple's encryption. Either there's something wrong with that descriptionl or Manafort was stupidly storing stuff in an unencrypted form.
Even Apple can't stop a determined user from doing something stupid.
If I'm mistaken in my reading of this situation, I'm sure Swordmaker can correct me with regard to Apple's involvement. It seems counter to everything I have read about Apple's encryption.
It appears to me you have to try to do so, since local backup through iTunes -is- privately encrypted, and that's the recommended way to do it.
So Manafort chose to backup his phone messages without private encryption. Stupid.
There's no comparison between the two situations. Sorry, that's fake news (or at least, false accusation) on that point.
The terrorists were not as stupid as Manafort, that's all.
I have owned and sold AAPL a few times over the years, it has been good to me, but, me thinks you protest too much.
Like fake news a fake differentiation.
NB: AAPL refused to assist in the San Bernardino investigation. But jumped in with both feet to help Mueller.
Does not pass a basic smell test.
I thought the fedz just got done paying out a huge chunk of OUR $TAX$ to build the new evidence building to spy on US.?
That's a false assertion, Dumbgrunt. Try to knock some facts before you spread FAKE NEWS.
In both situations—the San Bernardino Terrorist iPhone iCloud backups, and the Mueller investigation—when Apple was presented with legal search warrants to produce data of which they were custodians, Apple complied with the search warrants and produced the data. They provided the backups of the terrorists' iPhone and they provided what ever data they had Mueller was legally requesting. This is historic fact, DUMBGRUNT. Search it out.
What they could not and would not do was comply with an illegal All Writs court order requiring Apple to create a custom version of iOS which disabled all built-in security for iOS which would unlock ALL iPhones and iPads using that model's processor and older and hand it over to the FBI.
According to several US Supreme Court decisions going back two centuries it is well establish that All Writs orders can only require a third-party business to provide a service for the court that they are already do in the normal course of their business practice. An example given is that a court can use an All Writs order to require a locksmith to unlock a locked door because that is something the locksmith does in the normal course of his business; it cannot order the locksmith to build a new door, or to open a door that does not have a lock, or even open a combination safe, if that skill is not part of his normal business offering to the public.
Apple does not design and sell custom operating systems to order of any of its customers. and never has. Therefore an All Writs order to design and build any custom operating system to the specifications of the FBI was beyond the scope of what an All Writs order is legally permitted to be used for and the Appellate Court so ruled. The Magistrate Judge exceeded her authority to issue such an order which was actually written by the FBI's lawyers.
Apple DID offer its assistance in unlocking the terrorist's County issued iPhone, but was rebuffed by the FBI's task force which told them "Thanks but no thanks. We prefer to do it ourselves."
These Ignorant FBI geniuses, working with the San Bernardino County IT "expert" idiotically decided the best way to get into the iPhone was to change the Terrorist's AppleID password associated with that iPhone which Apple would have told them NOT TO DO, but they did anyway, which succeeded in LOCKING the device beyond even Apple's ability to retrieve the data on the device!
That's more facts.
Completely incorrect comparison. See Swordmaker’s detailed explanation in #19. He said it better than me.
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