Maybe that's the case on your home planet...
...but not here in the real world:
Posted on 02/29/2016 12:16:29 PM PST by Swordmaker
Tomorrow, Apple will make its case before Congress, as General Counsel Bruce Sewell gives testimony to the House Judiciary Committee at 1PM ET. It's Apple's first appearance before Congress since the company received an order to break security measures on a phone linked to the San Bernardino attacks, and Sewell may be facing a skeptical crowd. He'll be joined by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who has been an outspoken critic of the company's encryption policies, as well as a number of House representatives who have been vocal supporters of the FBI's position in the past. FBI Director James Comey will also appear before the committee, although he will appear on a separate panel.
Sewell submitted his prepared opening statement to the panel earlier today, and it is reproduced in full below:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's my pleasure to appear before you and the Committee today on behalf of Apple. We appreciate your invitation and the opportunity to be part of the discussion on this important issue which centers on the civil liberties at the foundation of our country.
I want to repeat something we have said since the beginning — that the victims and families of the San Bernardino attacks have our deepest sympathies and we strongly agree that justice should be served. Apple has no sympathy for terrorists.
We have the utmost respect for law enforcement and share their goal of creating a safer world. We have a team of dedicated professionals that are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to assist law enforcement. When the FBI came to us in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, we gave all the information we had related to their investigation. And we went beyond that by making Apple engineers available to advise them on a number of additional investigative options.
But we now find ourselves at the center of an extraordinary circumstance. The FBI has asked a Court to order us to give them something we don’t have. To create an operating system that does not exist — because it would be too dangerous. They are asking for a backdoor into the iPhone — specifically to build a software tool that can break the encryption system which protects personal information on every iPhone.
As we have told them — and as we have told the American public — building that software tool would not affect just one iPhone. It would weaken the security for all of them. In fact, just last week Director Comey agreed that the FBI would likely use this precedent in other cases involving other phones. District Attorney Vance has also said he would absolutely plan to use this on over 175 phones. We can all agree this is not about access to just one iPhone.
The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products. Hackers and cyber criminals could use this to wreak havoc on our privacy and personal safety. It would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens.
Hundreds of millions of law-abiding people trust Apple’s products with the most intimate details of their daily lives – photos, private conversations, health data, financial accounts, and information about the user's location as well as the location of their friends and families. Some of you might have an iPhone in your pocket right now, and if you think about it, there's probably more information stored on that iPhone than a thief could steal by breaking into your house. The only way we know to protect that data is through strong encryption.
Every day, over a trillion transactions occur safely over the Internet as a result of encrypted communications. These range from online banking and credit card transactions to the exchange of healthcare records, ideas that will change the world for the better, and communications between loved ones. The US government has spent tens of millions of dollars through the Open Technology Fund and other US government programs to fund strong encryption. The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, convened by President Obama, urged the US government to fully support and not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software.
Encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing. We have been using it in our products for over a decade. As attacks on our customers’ data become increasingly sophisticated, the tools we use to defend against them must get stronger too. Weakening encryption will only hurt consumers and other well-meaning users who rely on companies like Apple to protect their personal information.
Today’s hearing is titled Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy. We believe we can, and we must, have both. Protecting our data with encryption and other methods preserves our privacy and it keeps people safe.
The American people deserve an honest conversation around the important questions stemming from the FBI’s current demand:
Do we want to put a limit on the technology that protects our data, and therefore our privacy and our safety, in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks? Should the FBI be allowed to stop Apple, or any company, from offering the American people the safest and most secure product it can make?
Should the FBI have the right to compel a company to produce a product it doesn't already make, to the FBI’s exact specifications and for the FBI’s use?
We believe that each of these questions deserves a healthy discussion, and any decision should be made after a thoughtful and honest consideration of the facts.
Most importantly, the decisions should be made by you and your colleagues as representatives of the people, rather than through a warrant request based on a 220 year- old-statute.
At Apple, we are ready to have this conversation. The feedback and support we're hearing indicate to us that the American people are ready, too.
We feel strongly that our customers, their families, their friends and their neighbors will be better protected from thieves and terrorists if we can offer the very best protections for their data. And at the same time, the freedoms and liberties we all cherish will be more secure.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your questions.
Keep up the good work bro.
And again, you trot out the ad hominems. . . and YOU need to know that you can't even TELL the time because you are trying to tell the time using a crowbar. I try to explain to you WHY you can't use a crowbar and you start going "LALALALALAL, i know all about telling time with crowbars! You are too stupid as an Apple users to know how to use a crowbar to tell time!"
No, they are making rational reasoned arguments in opposition to a violation of the LAW. That is not screaming. YOU are the one who is spouting hyperbolic, breathless claims with out any truth behind them. YOU are the one using personal character assassination as a reason to be opposed to their position. You are to one pointing fingers and screaming nasty things.
All you've been posting are LIES. . . and that photo is really ironic, considering it is Apple that is standing up against the National Socialists in our government who want to surveil everyone. YOU are one of those with your right arm raised and your hand outstretched screaming hell FBI! Government Uber Alles. . .as you walk in lockstep to what ever the police state says!
You are afraid to stand out and NOT raise your hand in salute to the supreme leader. You won't even admit that you were wrong when a Court of Law comes down on Apple's side.
I officially signed on to FR on December 3, 1997, when they required an email address. Since that date I’ve made and read tens of thousands of posts.
I can say, without hesitation, that this photo represents the most uninformed opinion I have ever seen or read on this forum. Unequivocal misinformation. It is actually impossible to be any more wrong.
Unbelievable. Mind boggling.
I have to bookmark it.
I came to the conclusion this afternoon that DiogenesLamp is a "dis-information cartoonist". He's not good enough to be a dis-information artist. Unfortunately, he's really not funny. No one can be this consistently wrong for so long in the face of so much fact being mounted against his position, without being deliberately dis-informing about what he is doing.
Who's pulling your puppet strings? Whose water are you carrying, DiogenesLamp?
Specifically?
Huh? Please be coherent and specific.
Your allegory is worthless.
I was quite coherent and quite specific. . . if you use an iPhone. I described exactly what happens when you use the technique outlined by Apple. Here is what happens:
It restarts and then presents you with the normal swipe to open screen and that REQUIRES your passcode to be input to continue! Hooray, you're in. But you don't get in without it, or your AppleID and password, it just won't happen as you seem to think!
Let's put that into a form a non-iPhone user will understand.
You've successfully re-installing iOS from the Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode. When iOS finishes re-installing, the last thing that occurs, is the iPhone or iPad RESTARTS. Once that restart is done, the iPhone presents the user with the normal Open screen. That requires the user to swipe from right to left to get to the enter passcode screen, or to use the TouchID to open the iPhone. Swiping brings you to a ten key screen to enter the passcode. . . if you know it. If you don't, you cannot get to the original user's data. Alternately, you can log on with the original user's AppleID and password.
You seem to be operating under the mis-information that re-loading iOS from DFU mode will get a hacker into the user's data by-passing the passcode. It will NOT allow that. There's a chance you can re-install the current operating system without erasing the user data, but YOU WILL HAVE TO STILL INPUT THE USER PASSCODE TO ACCESS IT. Got it now????
However, any CHANGES to the firmware, or a reversion to an earlier iOS version WILL result in the data being erased and the only way to recover the data is from a BACKUP through iTunes or the iCloud.
GO IT???
Please provide an Apple.com page to support your claims.
But you were so congenial and I enjoyed discussing the whole matter with you. You actually made me see that the line between what is the right thing to do is more blurry than I first thought. And you clarified a few things I didn't have quite right.
It was your post #154. Apple put back original OS. Didn't think of that, very good.
Crap shoot. True. May be nothing of interest. But like you said, could be something very worthwhile. I should be glad they are being so thorough about it but I still don't understand why they released the apartment so quickly. It was the landlord that let the reporters in, may have had a different agenda than FBI or it was coordinated.
Good. We agree about snooping. I do have a phone, a land line. I meant I didn't have a cell phone. I also have a Magic Jack. No clue how secure that is. But I keep a folded index card over the camera lens on top. And on some sites there are quick flashes just like a camera flash. That's being paranoid but I know if they want to and have the capability, they can turn on the sound and camera. I don't lie awake worrying about it.
Apple is going to stick with the back door, guess it plays well. If paramedics had to break into my house because the door was locked, I doubt they'd traipse all the way around to the back door which happens to be locked tighter. BTW if I were able, I would tell them where I hide the spare key and how to get at it. Less damaging than breaking down the front door. I meant the foregoing as a little analogy; there isn't a real good one. If you climb through a Window, you have the wrong OS :-(. But I digress, and it's too late to still be up.
So I think unless there is further news, we are pretty much on the same page about all of it.
I am losing all patience with you yahoos who cannot seem to grasp simple concepts! It is becoming obvious you should not be trusted with words of which you do not know the definition. It makes you dangerous. Frankly, it explains a lot.
RAY! It's not an "allegory"!
It's the exact description of WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RESTORE THE OPERATING SYSTEM OF AN IPHONE USING THE DFU MODE AND YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL IN NOT ERASING THE USER DATA!
SHEESH! I'm shouting because you seem to be too ignorant to understand that an exact description of actions following a specific event is NOT AN ALLEGORY!
al·le·go·ry
ˈaləˌɡôrē/—noun
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
There was NO hidden message. It was explicit and direct.
Buy an iPhone and TRY IT, asshat. They assume that anyone who needs those pages are going to be using an iPhone and will be DOING IT ON AN iPHONE. Res Ipsa Loquitur. The thing speaks for itself, when you DO IT.
What part of "I have done this numerous times for clients" did you fail to comprehend? I did not write that just to waste my time on FR. I have done it.
USE YOUR HEAD for something other than a hat rack, Ray76. Apple is NOT going to leave so simple a method of getting around 256 bit AES ENCRYPTION which REQUIRES and MUST HAVE the input of a USER PASSCODE to DECIPHER the user data as just re-installing the operating system with the DFU mode. WHERE IS IT GOING TO GET THE USER PASSCODE FROM IF THE USER DOES NOT INPUT IT ON STARTUP???? Remember, it is NOT STORED ANYWHERE ON THE iPHONE!
As I said before, QUIT trying to teach people who USE Apple product how to use them WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE EVEN AN INKLING OF A CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!
be the single guy in the crowd of fascists who refuses to give the fascist salute?
ok, but i wonder why this does not seem to back your original high level orientation to force apple to comply with the fbi...
It would be simpler for you to put that in your sigline instead of attaching it to each of your comments.
The new FBiOS the government wants to compel Apple to write would have an unlimited number of password guesses, no delay between password guesses, and an interface to accept passwords entered automatically through a data port instead of manually through the touchscreen. This combination of security loopholes would enable anyone to break into the phone in a few seconds. This most certainly is a backdoor.
Given the government's track record, this is like saying that internet security experts are trying to "fear stampede" people to avoid clicking on spam e-mail attachments or sending their bank account number to a Nigerian prince.
Do the words "chain of evidence" mean anything to you?
It is not (unfortunately) the chain somebody hits you with when you post something stupid. It is the concept that the police maintain full control of items of evidence at all times from collection to trial, and are able to verify at all times that the evidence in not tampered with. Ergo, the government would have full access to the phone during the installation and use of the new FBiOS, and would also necessarily have a copy of the source code (otherwise, it would be absolutely impossible to confirm that it was accessing the data already on the phone without altering it).
Maybe that's the case on your home planet...
...but not here in the real world:
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