Posted on 02/23/2016 11:34:59 AM PST by Swordmaker
The Justice Department is pursuing court orders to force Apple Inc. to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases around the country, in disputes similar to the current battle over a terrorist's locked phone, according to people familiar with the matter.
The other phones are at issue in cases where prosecutors have sought, as in the San Bernardino, Calif. terror case, to use an 18th-century law called the All Writs Act to compel the company to help them bypass the passcode security feature of phones that may hold evidence, these people said.
Privacy advocates are likely to seize on the cases' existence as proof the government aims to go far beyond what prosecutors have called the limited scope of the current public court fight over a locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.
Law enforcement leaders, however, may cite the existence of the other cases as evidence that the encryption of personal devices has become a serious problem for criminal investigators in a variety of cases and settings.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasdaq.com ...
If it is so conceptually easy, then the government, if it is smart enough, should be able to write its own OS patches, since it already has the data and it already has the OS image.
What am I missing?
So this renders one of Bill Gates’ points immediately inoperative, that the request is targeted to only one instance.
(From the guy who was responsible for Windows, what more can one expect...)
Code that is complete and put into a product is what I meant. And I hold that this is sound judgement. Not just anyone can write code, most do not have clue, or any interest for that matter.
IMO National Security is of paramount importance, and I would question the person who would try to circumvent national security in a product sold in the US or imported and used here. The bad guys will always find ways around things, so I would want to keep what we know, quiet. Loose lips you know.
I completely agree. Doesn't mean I have to like the next nail in the coffin.
Color me shocked.......not
Without access to this phone the DOJ won’t have a strong enough case to get the death penalty. /s
The FBI is lying (go figure)....
It will never stop at just ONE phone.
What’s that quote thank Franklin said about liberty vs. security?
Not even remotely close to accurate. Apple's code is proprietary. Only Apple knows how to modify it. The only way someone outside of Apple could modify it is if Apple gave them the source code. (Ain't gonna happen.)
LOL! Ironic that those who talk about the “rule of law” are oblivious to the fact that those rules & laws can change with one stroke of a pen.
You’re on the wrong website.
Why, do you think the site should only allow idiots?
How about you read something that might educate you?
This is really based, as we know, on your hatred of Tim Cook's sexual orientation.
You're unglued, and your arguments against liberty have no place here.
And you’re on the wrong website.
Collecting? I read dozens of news articles every day. I found this at Instapundit which I routinely look at daily. It states the legal facts of the case in a clear unbiased way, and it pretty much says Apple is screwed, and does not have a legal leg to stand on.
This is really based, as we know, on your hatred of Tim Cook's sexual orientation.
If i'm the one that's supposed to be infatuated with it, why are you the one that keeps bringing it up?
You're unglued, and your arguments against liberty have no place here.
My arguments are Pro-Liberty. I want the law enforced equally for all, especially if by enforcement, lives are saved. The first aspect of Liberty is life.
And you're still acting like a little child.
Can change you say? The Obungler wrote the book on changing things with the stroke of a pen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-became-a-bulwark-for-digital-privacy.html?_r=0
".... Apple had asked the F.B.I. to issue its application for the tool under seal. But the government made it public, ...."
The government made it public because this was the best chance they had to manipulate public opinion. This case is the perfect venue to play on the emotions and fears of the public. Setting a legal precedent was almost a given in the eyes of the DOJ.
Look up confirmation bias.
If i'm the one that's supposed to be infatuated with it, why are you the one that keeps bringing it up?
Your motivation is spelled out, in your own words. I'm just repeating them back to you.
I want the law enforced equally for all, especially if by enforcement, lives are saved.
False dilemma. The theory of justice is that it's better for one guilty man to go free. By your logic, we would imprison everyone (by taking their privacy and liberty), on the chance that someone was guilty.
Back to DU with you.
“Obama is behind this.”
Gathering more information on the guilty and innocent alike is not partisan. It’s an institutional obsession for law enforcement. It’s not like the government was coy about snooping into Americans’ communications in the last administration, or the one before that, or the one before that.
From your linked article:
"One of the tragic gaps in Cook's letter is that he ignores the strength of the government's Fourth Amendment case. He also fails to explain why granting the government's request necessarily involves the compromise of the privacy of millions when only one iPhone is at stake."
Richard Epstein's premise in his "Apple's iPhone Blunder" article, besides ignoring most of Apple's argument to focus on only a single point, the question of whether there was any right to privacy inherent in that particular iPhone, which really is NOT relevant since dead people have no right to privacy, and the fact that the County, the true owner of the iPhone, gave its permission to open it, again irrelevant, but rather his point that the Court Order only applied to that SINGLE PHONE and that Apple had no case to that it would apply any further than that to the millions of other iPhones in the wild.
Tragic Gap? Cook was completely right. Epstein is repeating YOUR canard that, "It's not that important or serious, it only applies to just this case and just this one iPhone. Apple can keep the software or even destroy it after opening this phone. What's to worry about?"
That has no been shot down in Spades, as counting this case, there are now THIRTEEN such "Any Writs Act" cases the Department of Justice has opened with exactly the SAME demand on Apple! Create software to unlock these iPhones and iPads because we want to see what's in them. Epstein is wrong. Dead wrong. This IS a precedent setting case.
Epstein is short sighted and clueless. He continues on to argue that the "All Writs Act" has been used multiple times before and has been used to compel "labor" as if compelling CREATIVITY is the same thing as doing a search through documents, or drilling out a cylinder of a lock, or digging up a field with a backhoe. This order is treading new ground, ordering a company to create something that will actually MATERIALLY DAMAGE its main product for now and the foreseeable future, and in addition put almost a billion other devices protected by what the court orders be compromised at risk. That is NOT something that is, as Epstein so blithely dismisses, done thousands of times every week. It is, literally, unique in jurisprudence. Ordering a construction company to break down a wall to find a hidden room or an electrician to trace a hidden circuit to find stolen electricity is a far cry from requiring a company to invent something to order that will actually harm itself and its primary products, and its customers around the world. That has NOT been ever required by any "All Writs Act" order before in history. Judges simply do not have the power to order anyone to damage themselves, much less destroy themselves to comply with a court order.
Compromising the primary security of the Apple iOS ecosystem IS of that potential destructive level in this field. It is that important to people because their passwords, their credit and debit cards, their banking records, and many other extremely personal data is secured by Apple's promise to not allow anything into their devices.
Apple Versus the FBI
It's possible that the FBI is not primarily concerned with the particular evidence stored on the San Bernardino shooter's phone at all.
Andrea Castillo --February 23, 2016 -- Reason MagazineThe technology industry is in an uproar over the revelation of a series of court orders directing Apple to compromise iPhone security to assist in the FBI investigation of deceased San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. In a public letter to Apple customers published last Wednesday, CEO Tim Cook strongly condemned the order to build a so-called "back door" for government access into encrypted technology. The FBI, on the other hand, counters that this request is a reasonable and narrow means to bring about justice for the victims of terrorism. Stripping away the emotional rhetoric from all sides, the core question is whether a company can be compelled to build a tool for law enforcement that will compromise the security of any of its devices.
In the short term, such a precedent could create significant ethical dilemmas for technology firmsâ customer and business relationships while opening the door to similar demands from foreign governments. In the long term, the FBIâs efforts may ultimatelyâand ironicallyâundermine the agency's broader goal of accessing critical evidence by encouraging tech companies to build products that are impervious to infiltration by design. This incident is only the latest conflict in a years-long encryption and security war waging between privacy- and security-minded groups and the law enforcement community. As more communications are digitized, authorities have been calling for industry assistance to build so-called government "backdoors" into secure technologies by hook or by crook.
Those in law enforcement fear a scenario where critical evidence in a terrorism or criminal case is beyond the reach of law enforcement because it is protected by strong encryption techniques that conceal data from anyone but the intended recipient. Hence, leaders at agencies like the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency, along with President Obama, have weighed in against strong encryption. . .
read more at the link
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