Didn’t refer to any case at all. Perhaps you meant this reply for someone else?
If I had it would be that of Francis Rawls who has been locked up for almost a year because he claims to have forgotten his password.
CHEAP AND EASY encryption indeed leads to the problem that unlocking one device means unlocking all devices.
Individualized encryption requires more effort and expense by the manufacturer- and more cost to the consumer. But maintains the Fourth Amendment and, given a large enough production, is affordable.
Apple provides access to the iCloud backups, with a Search Warrant. The iCloud is Apple property, and the data backed up on the iCloud is provided without complaint - with a Search Warrant. This is as it should be.
The iPhone, is a product designed by Apple, but belongs to the person who bought it. Think of it as your personal Diary. It contains your health information, your personal photos, your intimate details of where you were, who you talked with, how long it took to walk up a hill, what your pulse was when you walked up that hill, any pauses you took, your medications, your conversations, emails, texts, personal notes, etc. And as such, it is encrypted and locked.
Now, the State of California owned that phone, and had access to control that phone; but neglected to exercise due caution as to how to manage that phone. Then, they gave that phone to a person who was in contact with a known terrorist group, who then journeyed to a country with known terrorist cells, then married a woman with known terrorist connections, and then travelled back to the USA and flew right through Customs (not to mentoin the No-Fly List) with not a single question asked.
Then the unspeakable act happened - terrorism happened - by known terrorist agents. And who does the FBI blame? Why, Apple of course.
They demand that Apple make a hack that bypasses the security on the iPhone 5c, because the authorities utterly cluster-f’d the system that would have normally backed up any information on that phone automatically to the iCloud, where the subpeona would have gotten it easily.
The authorities changed the password on the iPhone, then forgot what they changed it to. Detective Clousou was on the case, and he was in rare form.
The FBI then demanded that Apple develop a bypass to the security, that they designed to protect ALL of thier customers, world-wide; because the authorities bungled this case utterly, and completely. And Apple said “No”. And Apple was right to say “No”.
If you want to hack the phone, use a 3rd party to get into it - you cannot “force” a company to provide a hack, that would then be available to be used on every iphone in the world, by anyone. First off, Apple is not a slave; they are a free, private, American company.
Secondly, the reason the FBI found themselves in this situation; is because of inept technical prowess of the agents. Perhaps if they would have asked Apple at the start “Hey, we want the information off the dead terrorist’s iPhone, how do we get it?” - this whole fiasco could have been prevented.
I’m not willing to surrender my privacy; because Barny Fife screwed up.
Excuse me? Who told you that the best encryption on any mobile device and the strongest security is "CHEAP AND EASY encryption"? It is far from that. It is baked into the hardware and the OS and provides rock solid end-to-end 256 bit AES encryption of everything on the device. It is not a pasted on after thought such as you are claiming is better. Access to ALL Android devices has been available from multiple vendors for years, despite every thing Google and the multiple manufacturers of Android devices have tried.
Only three weeks ago did a company finally get to the point of being able to offer a means of cracking into a modern iPhone. Before that it was not possible. The Hacking Team offered the means to get into every other mobile device on the market, but NOT the modern iPhone.
That new development was due to an Israeli security company out-bidding Apple at the White Hat hackers competition in late June by bidding $1 million for what appeared at the time to be a general iOS vulnerability which later turned out to affect not only Apple iOS but apparently all other mobile devices in general AND OS X Yosemite and El Capitan as well. This crack only gained access to certain currently in use data, but not to everything encrypted on the iPhone such as stored data, but it was still quite worrisome as it apparently allowed the one who had it to track the phone, tap into the messaging services and email being sent and received prior to and after encryption, track internet activity, operate the camera and microphone surreptitiously and monitor the user's activities.
What it did not and could not do is get the user's passcode. That processing is handled by a dedicated Encryption processor which with its own buried memory which is locked off from even the main processor.
This Israeli company made this crack available only to government agencies around the world for a fee of $650,000 for 10 devices plus a one-time $500,000 set up fee. The exploit required the installation of a malicious app onto the iPhone by some means, either surreptitiously, by hook or crook, or physical possession, or by phishing the target. In other words, it was a sophisticated Trojan, and not one that would or could be targeted to the average user.
The Israeli company had also made it also available for Android, Symbian, Blackberry, and (although not mentioned) Windows phones, because the three vulnerabilities were apparently in a standard that all five systems use.
However, it is no longer available to that company for Apple iOS devices. . . Because Apple closed those vulnerabilities on iOS devices within three days of discovering their first use in the wild. A week later it was discovered the same vulnerabilities were shared with OS X, and Apple closed them there as well. It will not be closed on more than 80% of Android devices in the wild, all of the Symbian devices still out there. It will probably be fixed for both Windows, Blackberry, and more modern Android devices running the later versions of Android.
Any pasted on encryption has to put the passcodes and testing software to unlock it somewhere outside of the encrypted data. That is its soft point and the way to attack it to break in, it's Achilles Heel. Apple does not have that at all as the passcode is not kept on the device at all.