Posted on 11/26/2014 5:17:32 PM PST by Swordmaker
The Justice Department is turning to a 225-year-old law to tackle a very modern problem: password-protected cellphones.
Prosecutors last month persuaded a federal magistrate in Manhattan to order an unnamed phone maker to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to unlock a password-protected phone that could contain evidence in a credit-card-fraud case, according to court filings. The court had approved a search warrant for the phone three weeks earlier. The phone maker, its operating system and why the government has not been able to unlock it remain under seal.
The little-noticed case could offer hints for the government’s strategy to counter new encryption features from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., say privacy advocates and people familiar with such cases say.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
There are 10 kinds of people who know binary.
A crummy commercial? Son of a b——!
“Best to speak privately and face to face.”
A golf course is the perfect place.......
One solution to that is to normalize encryption so using it doesn’t look unusual. That’s where Apple is trying to go with it.
Watch out for the 19th hole.
Fair enough.
I used to be able to walk around my back yard with a portable wireless home phone, and pick up neighbor conversations. That was an eye opener. Non-encrypted conversations on their portable phones. After that, I went and bought the most secure wireless I could find for home use. Even then, I'd rather used a wired home phone (most people have ditched those in favor of cellphones, but I'm keeping mine).
People who write in ones and zeros, and others who don't?
Too freaking bad. Government should leave our private papers alone. Yes, even those of "criminals", because with as many laws as are on the books, everyone is a "criminal."
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
--Ayn Rand.
Perfect. My hat's off to you.
687474703a2f2f7777772e796f75747562652e636f6d2f77617463683f763d65507a7767304c79594c30
01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101001 01110010 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101100 01101100 00101110
Just put your own encryption program on that phone or tablet.They may get through the first lock but they’ll have to expend a whole lot more time to break the second.
Amen
40bf2f3e17d43711f93592ca1ccee86e
*
It really is unnecessary to do that. On an iPhone, in iOS 8, Apple has provided standard 256 bit AES encryption. If you choose complex passcodes, you can use a passcode that can be any one of 256227 possible combinations. That passcode which only you know is entangled with the iPhone's or iPad's UUID by an algorithm. This entangled passcode is then converted to a hash and stored in the devices Secure Element section of the processor. . . only as a hash. The passcode can not be derived by working backwards from knowing the hash. Each time the passcode in entered through the keyboard only, a new UUID entanglement is generated, the hash is regenerated, and compared with the stored hash. If they match, the phone is opened, and the portions of the encrypted stored data the user accesses during that session are temporarily decrypted and re-encrypted as necessary, no more.
All attempts to decode the contents of the FLASH memory can only work on the iDevice, nowhere else. . . because it requires the processor with its Secure Element, and the Unique Unit ID. So the encrypted contents of the device cannot simply be copied to a supercomputer for sheer speed and brute strength breaking, as if their somewhat faster attempts would shave much time off of aeons.
When the user sends anything to Apple icloud, the data is also. 256 bit encrypted with the user's entangled passcode which Apple has no access to and cannot determine, no matter how hard they try. Once it arrives on an Apple server, it is identifiable only by the user's unique identifier, but not by name, so it is anonymous. The data is further encrypted to an addition 256 bit AES WITH Apple's passcode, then split, aggregated with other users' data and stored in a recoverable format that only the user may retrieve.
If, the government or court should order Apple to turn over copies of that raw data, there is no way for Apple to distinguish the target's data from anyone elses' without their icloud passcode, and if they did give the authorities the assumed whole aggregate, even unencrypted using Apple's passcode, all the authorities would have is volume and volumes of disconnected gobble-de-gook. Meanwhile, the owner's privacy is protected.
Now I'm not going to use a 256 character passcode. I don't want to have to type it in just to make or answer a phone call, but shorter one can be almost as effective, especially when paired with TouchID PROPERLY.
Thanks for explaining that.I wrote what I did because the way I read the Article it sounded as if law enforcement would get a judge to force the company to provide the necessary assistance to break the encryption.
Thanks again.And while I’m at it I’m going to increase the size of my password.
>>Generally speaking, using encryption on public nets makes you suspicious.
>>One solution to that is to normalize encryption so using it doesn’t look unusual. That’s where Apple is trying to go with it.
Agree with both.
There is nothing criminal about my bank balance, but I’m not interested in posting it for the whole world to see, least of all the government. Just because I’m wearing clothes doesn’t mean I’m hiding an embarrassing tattoo. I just like my privacy. Government, big business, and nosy neighbors can butt out.
Use a pass phrase, something not found in a dictionary. Something like:
27Katz8aVoLv0425¢
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