Posted on 02/09/2016 2:47:00 PM PST by bkopto
Months after the tragic shooting at a health clinic in San Bernardino, FBI agents are still unable to unlock the phone used by one of the attackers, according to new statements by FBI director James Comey.
Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey mentioned the case as a prime example of device encryption hindering an investigation. "In San Bernardino, a very important investigation for us, we still have one of those killer's phones that we have not been able to open," Comey told the Committee. "It's been over two months now. We're still working on it."
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
1234...enter!
To me, I'll go with security and safety - with obama bringing in 170,000 islamic muslims who cut off peoples heads and pull out machine guns.
Yet those terrorists were part of some radical group and they were collecting info on them but the Obama administration shut it down because it wasn’t on the official terror group list.
I loved that ad.
Here’s my problem with the meme that NSA cannot get into an iPhone or similar because the encryption is so strong that even “acres of supercomputers running for years at best, age of the universe at worst.” If that were really the case as many claim, than why doesn’t the military use something similar? And if the military of this country and others use such a system why is NSA still around?
The answer is likely that the meme is not actually unbreakable, and there is some other way (secret/classified) way of breaking into these systems. No backdoor. Something else. Have no idea personally, but seems the only explanation why NSA and others like it are still in business. And no it isn’t there just to listen to your phone calls -
Sometimes the obvious is discarded as too simple.
I agree with you completely. Shout it from the mountaintops.
Its good to know some things are out of reach for even Fed.gov
Don’t expect loyalty, especially when its Barack Obama and progressive social-engineering schemes of our Fed.gov masters that brought those criminals from Pak/Saudi in the first place.
Gufficer to the rescue.
“You wouldn’t need to unlock their phones if you didn’t let the moslems into the country in the first place.”
Precisely.
L
FBI is as EVIL as their BOSS, OBAMA!!
Call Penelope Garcia, c’mon!
How can this be?
I see all these TV Shows and Movies where some Nerd can break into anything including our Nuclear Launch Codes.
Didn’t the FBI ever watch 24, The Avengers or any recent James Bond Movies?
Heck, even Jeff Goldblum hacked into the Alien Mother Ship Computer in Independence Day.
Maybe they don’t really want to know what’s on that Phone. Could be a Homemade Sex Video or something. Ewwwww...
“with industrial grade security clearly gotten from foreign intelligence services”
No, standard encryption commercially available to anyone in the U.S.
That’s why they are so eager to get this legislation passed and force the manufacturers to build backdoors in. They can’t even crack run-of-the-mill security on consumer devices anymore.
The problem is, security is an all or nothing proposition. If we make the device less secure for the government, we make it less secure for EVERYONE who would like to get at our data.
“I fear you .gov tyrants more than I fear the terrorists”
Ditto that.
Can’t they just hire a 14 or 15 yr old? Less than a minute probably.
Your argument seems to boil down to “Hey, just trust them, they are from the government!”
That’s not going to win people over I think. I have never heard of a government being given a power that it had the capability to abuse and then NOT abusing it. It’s as inevitable as winter following summer.
You also neglect to address the issue that, if we make our data less secure so that the government can get access, we also make it less secure so that ANYONE can get access, including criminals and foreign governments. There is no way to only make it less secure for just our own government. You leave the door open, anyone can get in.
What kind of morons do we have at the FBI these days?
I’m guessing a bunch of affirmative action types.
“The answer is likely that the meme is not actually unbreakable, and there is some other way (secret/classified) way of breaking into these systems.”
No, the answer is that not every company, device, and network is currently set up to be as secure as iPhone data is. There is nothing stopping them, the technology is freely available to all, but not all have adopted it yet. So the NSA is still able to collect and monitor plenty of data that is decryptable, for now. However, the writing is on the wall and they know that won’t be the case ten years from now, so they absolutely must get this legislation passed or they will be screwed until they get their hands on a working quantum computer.
“why doesn’t the military use something similar?”
Who says they fundamentally don’t? or use something better on general principle, which in doing so in no way detracts at the difficulty of breaking commercial strong encryption?
AFAIK, there is nothing compromising the security of RSA or better when using sufficient sized keys in normal usage.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.