FBI wants to change iPhone’s iOS: Fmr CIA chief

The FBI's attempts to force Apple to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists is not just about accessing information about the attack, but changing the architecture of the device's mobile operating system, former CIA director James Woolsey said Friday.

"The last time I looked into the language on this with some care, it did seem to me as if the FBI was trying to get a right essentially to effectively decide what kind of an operating system Apple was going to have, and that they were not just trying to get into one phone. They were trying to change some important aspect of Apple's operating system," Woolsey told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Lawmakers and tech companies have long been at odds over the encryption being built into consumer devices.

Tech companies generally say encryption is necessary to protect their customers' privacy in a world besieged by data breaches. But national security and law enforcement officials worry it is creating a powerful tool for terrorists to communicate covertly and putting up high-tech roadblocks to investigations.

The official seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is seen on an iPhone's camera screen outside the J. Edgar Hoover headquarters February 23, 2016 in Washington, DC.

The agency should not have the right to restructure Apple's iOS in perpetuity, Woolsey said.

"I don't think they're very good telephone designers, and I don't think that is their cache," he said.

The tech giant has refused a U.S. magistrate's order to create software that would allow the FBI to circumvent security measures built into the operating system on an iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people at a county government facility in San Bernardino, California, in December.

The bureau could likely unlock the iPhone, Woolsey said, but the manner in which it wants to accomplish that goal would make it necessary for Apple to create a backdoor into its phones. The company shouldn't have to do that, he said.

Woolsey, who is now the chairman at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spoke from the Young Presidents' Organization Conference in Dubai.

Let's see if we can put this in words you can grasp. The San Bernardino terrorists had BURNER phones they used and destroyed. That is the recommended pattern for all terrorists to use found on the ISIS website. They recommend buying a phone for which the terrorists can buy minutes for cash at any convenience store on a card. These are UNTRACEABLE. The phone number is not traceable by the authorities. These can be made completely anonymous.

The custom ISIS apps, which include unbreakable 256 bit AES encryption Apps which are designed to encrypt the data on a data card which can be easily removed from the burner phone and moved to a new one, making switching phone numbers at the drop of an identity dead easy, are NOT going to be found on Apple's App store, but they are found on Android third party stores.

They do NOT recommend using an iPhone or any phone that requires being registered with a standard carrier using a credit card and an ID. High end phones such as the iPhone linked to a carrier require too much traceable information to sign up with a carrier which WILL provide the authorities with all the phone calls and messages into and out of the device, as well as the emails received and sent. The phone number is attached by name. It is ANYTHING but anonymous.

Burner phones can be purchased anywhere for as low as $6 to as high as $50, depending on their capability. . . and makes it very economical to have several if necessary and damned easy to just smash the phone when convenient.

WAKE UP AND PAY ATTENTION!

Dog shootings?

What the heck does that have to do with unconstitutional invasion of privacy?

You are extremely naive, besides being flat-out wrong on issues. The woman was unfairly assaulted and arrested for stepping between a cop and her leashed dog (wagging its tail at the cop). Cop said it was his right to kill the dog, even though it was friendly and leashed. Her husband recorded the whole thing on her iPhone. Cops confiscated all their devices. Woman went to trial for assault with a weapon against a cop, based on the cop's lies.

For over a month the family tried to get the iPhone back from the cops. Meanwhile, the cops were trying to bypass the security on the iPhone to delete the incriminating recording. The family's attorneys were finally able to get the iPhone returned, the recording shown to the jury and she was acquitted of all charges. She had no weapon, was not attacking the cop, and the cop indeed assaulted her.

This is what we are talking about. Abuse of government authority and unconstitutional invasion of privacy that are supposed to be preventable by our Constitution. Yet you and others seek to tear down our rights against an overbearing government. Shame on you.

Let's see if we can put this in words you can grasp. The San Bernardino terrorists had BURNER phones they used and destroyed.

Irrelevant.Absolutely irrelevant.The issue in question is can investigators,after having received permission from one (or more) judges,access a person's "private papers" in cases,for example,involving national security (as in "San Bernadino"...or WTC...or Boston Marathon)?

And before you answer consider Wikipedia's quoting of the Fourth Amendment which will be included below.

Then,if you wish,we can discuss both the "ordinary" and *legal* definitions of the word "unreasonable".

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No.

I'm not going to look it up.

I want to see you and Lurker make the case, in writing.

Then, I'll compare what you write with the known facts.

What an arrogant position. The name is actually Cheryl Attkisson.

Cheryl Attkisson was a CBS reporter who was actually going after the Obama administration. She was, for a change, a real journalist in the Main Stream Media, unlike the rest of the lock-step Liberals. Although she, like most of them was a Liberal, she was wiling to follow the story where it led and report what she found impartially and truthfully.

As she followed stories, the pressure was brought to bear on her to bury her stories. She found that her work Windows laptop was infected with a trojan that installed a key logger, and other spyware keeping track of her stories. This was discovered not by the CBS IT department but an independent check. What was worse was that buried deep inside her computer the independent IT specialist found CLASSIFIED GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT hidden inside photographs she did not even know she had by steganographic means.

Later, it was discovered her house had been broken into and a surreptitious high speed FIBER CHANNEL cable run into her home network, her home Macintosh OS X computer physically modified—a wireless hardware key logger installed in her keyboard, spyware installed on the Mac, and the same kind of stenographic hidden classified files buried deep inside a Library inaccessible to the user.

All of this is something outside of the normal scope of surveillance used by your average hacker.

Ex-CBS reporter: Government agency bugged my computer
By Kyle Smith and Bruce Golding—New York Daily Post—October 27, 2014

Cheryl Attkisson
Photo: The O'Reilly Factor
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer.
In her new memoir, Sheryl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.
“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.
She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.
Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, non attributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”
The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”
This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did.
Attkisson says her source — identified only as “Number One” — told her the spying was most likely not court-authorized because it went on far longer than most legal taps.
But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”
“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.
In her book, Attkisson says CBS lost interest in her coverage of the deadly attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and killed her stories of the federal “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal.
Both CBS and the White House declined to comment.

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