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Apple CEO Cook condemns iPhone 'backdoor' order; calls it 'chilling,' 'dangerous'
upi.com ^ | February 17, 2016 | Shawn Price and Andrew V. Pestano

Posted on 02/17/2016 4:20:38 AM PST by John W

LOS ANGELES Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday said a court order demanding the company create a "backdoor" into the cellphone data of the San Bernardino, Calif., attackers was "chilling" and "dangerous."

In a letter to customers, Cook expressed his opposition to the court order.

"The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand," Cook wrote. "Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us. For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers' personal data because we believe it's the only way to keep their information safe. We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business."

(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: California; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 4thamendment; apple; california; privacy; sanbernadino; sanbernardino; waronterror
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To: Captain Peter Blood

So, we have to decide between two polar opposites, police state control of Americans, or perhaps imminent ISIS connected deaths.

This is a hard one for me to call, but I do get the dangers of security at any cost. Scripture warns us and history warns us.

A point was made on Morning Joe this morning that APPLE looks really silly claiming customer privacy & security, when you can walk past a store front and your I-phone reminds you that you like pink socks.

APPLE has all the information on us and uses it for business and privilege and profit, but lifts not a finger to track national security threats to save the United States from attack.

This is a new paradigm— a real test of value clarification, huh?


101 posted on 02/17/2016 9:10:10 AM PST by RitaOK ( VIVA CRISTO REY / Public education is the farm team for more Marxists coming)
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To: frankenMonkey

Beat me to it.


102 posted on 02/17/2016 9:21:37 AM PST by AFreeBird
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To: Swordmaker

You know the technology a lot better than I do - what is on the phone that they haven’t already inspected? They already have a list of every call, both outgoing and incoming. They may not have recordings of the conversations but they won’t get that by breaking into the phone anyway.

They have the full record of texts, any calendar items, all the contacts, and any pictures that are on it.

What else could they want?


103 posted on 02/17/2016 9:30:28 AM PST by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Seattle Conservative

The hardware holds half the key. The user holds the other half. The hardware was designed to make it difficult if not impossible to obtain that half. The other half died with the user.

Unless he wrote it down or left a clue back at his apartment. Of course Barry’s FBI let everyone into the crime scene to poke around. Idiots. Now they want Apple to cover their ass.

As for who he called, or who called him, the phone company has those records.


104 posted on 02/17/2016 9:37:34 AM PST by AFreeBird
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To: Swordmaker

“Apple was the first to use 256 bit AES encryption on their iOS devices”

Interesting post. Is the 256 bit AES encryption something that can’t be broken in less than a very long time, say 100 years?

And gosh, is all the government is really demanding is the 10-attempt thing?

Sounds like no one is going to break into that phone.


105 posted on 02/17/2016 9:43:43 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: frankenMonkey

“apple uses a dedicated chip”

Thanks for the more full discussion. My question to you is how does the owner of the iPhone make the phone decrypt the data?


106 posted on 02/17/2016 9:52:00 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: ohioman
Thanks for whining about someone mentioning the fact that cook is an avowed low-class sodomite. I knew some limp-wristed “conservative” would eventually complain about it.

And he is a member of a large group of people in favor of using the power of government to shut down small companies for not following a judge's order. I call that a steaming load of hypocrisy.

107 posted on 02/17/2016 9:55:53 AM PST by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Mississippi! My vote is going to Cruz.)
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To: RitaOK

I don’t know. The FBI others want a permanent backdoor into anyone’s cell phone and computer.

At what point do we stop giving up any rights for the sake of a false sense of security?

I don’t think any of this is really about what the FBI wants with that phone as it is with the larger issue of having total access to any device they want, when they want it.

This is the excuse they are using to get that back door they want.

On 9-11 the terrorists won and our government used this as the excuse they wanted, not to stop any terrorism, but to have a means of more spying on the citizens of this country and find a way to exert more control.

The TSA at the airports to the creation of Homeland Security, all has been to spy on us rather to really combat terrorism. There really is no way to fight or combat terrorism totally.

Our Freedoms have slowly eroded all in the name of saving us from Terrorism. Terrorism has replaced saving us from Communism as the new State of Fear. So much can be traced back to the National Security Act of 1947 on out march down the road to save us from ourselves.


108 posted on 02/17/2016 10:01:23 AM PST by Captain Peter Blood
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To: Made In The USA
Apple however is failing to acknowledge that a terrorist organization declared war on America and we're taking casualties.

If Apple gives the government access, the terrorists will simply move to software encryption on top of the iPhone security, they are not stupid, but 99% of citizen users will not bother to do that.

Getting the data from one phone will just give the government access to all phones which is the real reason for this demand by our kindly government.

I remember when PGP was announced, government worrywarts wanted to shut it down and make unbreakable encryption illegal.

True to form the same government that imports all these terrorists now complains that they can't track them without the tech industries help. How about not bringing them here?

109 posted on 02/17/2016 10:14:41 AM PST by itsahoot (1st impression. Trump is a fumble mouthed blowhard that can't speak in complete sentences. VoteTrump)
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To: cymbeline

I am NOT an expert, but the OS encrypts and decrypts automatically as needed. If the phone is turned off, the data is in an encrypted state. Only having logged on as the user can the data be accessed.


110 posted on 02/17/2016 10:16:05 AM PST by frankenMonkey
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To: Captain Peter Blood

You are soo correct, Captain. Perhaps we will simply rediscover that only God is in charge of our security, in this world, unto the next.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it appears wolves are circling their prey, coming from both sides of the field.


111 posted on 02/17/2016 10:17:30 AM PST by RitaOK ( VIVA CRISTO REY / Public education is the farm team for more Marxists coming)
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To: RFEngineer
Then let the judge try to enforce it.

I don't think that will be a problem. The Judge's next move will be to order Federal Marshals to grab whatever official of the Apple company that is responsible for refusing to comply with his order, and tossing him into jail on a contempt order.

The "backdoor" if it exists WOULD be used to grant the government easy access to all devices if Apple complies with this order.

Not necessarily. If Apple unlocks the phone, they don't have to tell anyone how they did it. Only if the government attempts to force them to reveal how they did it could your argument be valid. To my knowledge, this is not what is being asked of them. They aren't being ordered to grant the government access to all Iphones, just this one.

If you believe otherwise, you are not skeptical enough of your government.

Oh, i'm pretty skeptical of the government, but I'm also cognizant of the fact that a search warrant represents a valid and constitutionally legitimate process for allowing the government to have access to locked items.

We have the rule of law here, and we should also be expected to follow the law when it is in favor of the government performing it's legitimate duties.

If Apple stands firm and the government continues to whine about not being able to break this encryption, that will do more to boost their sales than anything else they can do.

Could be, but the current issue isn't about Apple sales. It's about Apple compliance with a Federal Judge's order. Apple may be big, but they aren't that big.

This current flap is about preventing effective encryption from being employed by regular Americans, so that the government can spy on them for whatever reason they want to.

No, that's how Apple is attempting to present it. The current flap is about Apple refusing to cooperate with an investigation by unlocking a phone for which there is a court order for them to do so, and regarding two dead people who no longer have any privacy rights under the law anyway.

I don't think Apple is going to win a fight with a Federal Judge, especially with the law on the Judge's side. Now they can characterize the issue any way they want, but this is not going to fool the Judge regarding his order with which they have yet to comply.

112 posted on 02/17/2016 10:52:19 AM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: csvset
Odd that the folks that let the media circus rampage through the killers home are now worried about evidence.

Exactly right. They didn't care one bit about the killers' connections until they suddenly realized the crime made a nice pretext for expanding their spying capabilities.

113 posted on 02/17/2016 10:59:22 AM PST by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: DiogenesLamp

This is not about hacking into one phone. The FBI wants Apple to create a tool that can be used to hack into ANY Apple product.

That’s the problem.


114 posted on 02/17/2016 11:14:33 AM PST by MeganC (The Republic of The United States of America: 7/4/1776 to 6/26/2015 R.I.P.)
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To: cymbeline
My guideline is, if I had super-secret information, don't keep it on a cell phone.

Yes. Better yet, don't own a cell phone. I know obnoxious relatives that my wife keeps tabs on. They tweet and post everything on their cell phone - everything they see and do, when they go on vacation, private information, what they purchase and own, etc. We know more about their habits than they do. We are more private, because it's not just super-secret information you need to keep from prying eyes. You don't need to yell at someone to stay off your lawn if you have a fence around it and keep the gate locked.

115 posted on 02/17/2016 11:42:31 AM PST by roadcat
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To: cymbeline
Interesting post. Is the 256 bit AES encryption something that can’t be broken in less than a very long time, say 100 years?

If the iPhone were locked with a 16 character passcode (perfectly possible) entangled with the internal 128 character UUID, and you are using a theoretical Supercomputer that could try 150,000 possible keys per second (three trillion per year) possible keys every second, then it COULD be broken in a mere 5.62 undecillion years. That's 5.62 X 10195 years.

Considering that it is estimated the Universe would have died a heat death into a soup of quarks and leptons by a mere 1080 years, your attempted tries would not even be half-way done before there'd be no atoms or protons, neutrons, or even electrons left to do it with.

116 posted on 02/17/2016 11:57:21 AM PST by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue....)
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To: Liz
The San Bernardino killers and their ilk are enemies of the US....they are bent on destroying our freedoms and everything we stand for.

They may be bent on the destruction of our freedoms but, sadly, it is a cowardly American public who are succeeding on their behalf. Your post is exhibit A.

117 posted on 02/17/2016 12:32:05 PM PST by pgyanke (Republicans get in trouble when not living up to their principles. Democrats... when they do.)
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To: DiogenesLamp
The Judge's next move will be to order Federal Marshals to grab whatever official of the Apple company that is responsible for refusing to comply with his order, and tossing him into jail on a contempt order.

You favor a government that has the right to press you into service at the point of a gun? In order to be subject to jail, one has to be in contravention of the law. Show me the law that says the court can issue an order to anyone for any reason and jail them if they don't comply!

That is what is being threatened here. The back door doesn't exist. Apple is being pressed into service to create one. Since when do were cheer on the government forcing a citizen or company to develop a product to defeat their own business?

118 posted on 02/17/2016 12:37:28 PM PST by pgyanke (Republicans get in trouble when not living up to their principles. Democrats... when they do.)
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To: Liz

In matters of security vs freedom, I side with Freedom. There are other ways to catch the bad guys without giving the government and hackers access to my iPhone.


119 posted on 02/17/2016 12:42:48 PM PST by Protect the Bill of Rights
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To: Protect the Bill of Rights
There are other ways to catch the bad guys without giving the government and hackers access to my iPhone.

Not letting the bad guys into this country in the first place would be a good start.

120 posted on 02/17/2016 12:44:31 PM PST by dfwgator
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