Posted on 03/21/2016 4:40:21 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The Justice Department moved to cancel a Tuesday hearing over whether Apple should be forced to help investigators break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, saying it might no longer need Apple’s assistance to extract data from the device.
In a new court filing on Monday, Justice Department lawyers wrote that as of Sunday, an outside party had demonstrated a way for the F.B.I. to possibly unlock the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino gunmen.
“Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing. “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple.”
The Justice Department requested that the court cancel Tuesday’s hearing and said it would file a status report by April 5 on its progress on unlocking the iPhone.
The Justice Department’s move may help sidestep a clash that has erupted between the United States government and Apple over the iPhone and how and when authorities should use the troves of digital data collected and stored by tech companies. The two sides have traded barbs over the issue for weeks, ever since Apple received a court order last month requesting that the company comply with an order to weaken the security of the iPhone so law enforcement could gain access to the data in it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Fart Barf and Itch blinked. Lol
It’s stupid anyway. How do you force someone to write code that doesn’t exist?
—John McAfee stated on Fox News about a month ago that it could be accessed in about twenty minutes and offered to do it-—
No.
Public opinion was shifting further and further in favor of Apple the longer this went on.
So they admitted they could do the job without Apple.
This was never about gaining the capacity to learn what is on a phone when it is needed.
This was always about gaining the capacity to unobtrusively scan any phone at any time completely, on a whim.
EXPECTED. Many of us had LONG SUSPECTED that this so-called ‘fight’ between Apple and the US Government was really just an smokescreen for allowing the Feds to have FULL ACCESS to I-Phones. The idea, of course, was to make it appear that Apple was fighting for their customers...but they simply ‘lost’.
LOL.
“outside party” = N.S.A.
It doesn’t. The blustering by the FBI is because the FBI isn’t afforded all the NSA resources and they have complained about that for decades. The FBI can ask the NSA very politely but they get tired of having to ask so they want weaker systems.
“The idea, of course, was to make it appear that Apple was fighting for their customers...but they simply ‘lost’.”
Yup. I thought so too. Tim Cook is one of the biggest obama ass kissers and he’s supposed to “defend” Apple? LOL
The significant factor is that if the FBI can get the data this way there is no justification for using the AWA.
“The idea, of course, was to make it appear that Apple was fighting for their customers...but they simply ‘lost’.”
I don’t know about that ... I think the Feds wanted an “easy” way to do this overall and used this case as leverage. They failed.
I think what they have now is a “difficult” way to hack the phone (probably something involving the hardware itself). They’ll still get what they want, but they won’t have that “easy” backdoor way that they desire.
Anything can be hacked. Literally anything. It’s merely a function of time-to-unlock and bypassing the iPhone’s data-self-destruct sequence :-). Unless you have that hardware in hand, you aren’t going to defeat any security on any of the big two’s smartphones “easily” w/o a backdoor. I hate Apple, but it’d be a tragedy if their shares lost value when this really isn’t a weakness on their end (assuming my assumptions are correct).
I never supported apple but I support nsa searches requiring a search warrant. This, too, was a clear search warrant case to me. Beyond that, it was a national security issue. As such covert means to break a code used by an enemy would have been nothing out of the ordinary for the covert services.
I think the idea that Apple's Iphone security can be defeated by a third party is a bigger blow to Apple than would have been their cooperation with the FBI.
If my phone system was so easily breakable, I would rather have kept that information on the down low.
No, this was all just a ploy. The us gov has had the keys to i phones for a long time. It gives apple market share for some other deal it cut with the feds. People are jumping to buy apple as they are “resisting” (not), which as a company has started to lag quite a bit since the lose of S. Jobs.
You mean that thing they do every single day? I dunno, just tell them to "do it".
That is because Apple has made every possible effort to convince everyone that this was what was happening. People smart enough to read the FBI filing with the Court know that Apple was just doing a chicken little "The SKY IS FALLING!!!!" dance. Nothing in the FBI filing said what Apple was claiming.
Apple should receive the Joseph Goebbels award for excellence in propaganda this year.
“I don’t know about that ... I think the Feds wanted an “easy” way to do this overall and used this case as leverage. They failed.”
Yes, and I suspect that the FBI had a heads up that the court was going to find in Apple’s favor, so they folded rather than take the hit publically.
Having worked at the ‘Puzzle Palace’ in a previous lifetime, I never believed they didn’t have a solution. If you people only knew ...
“You mean that thing they do every single day? I dunno, just tell them to “do it”. “
Well, if that’s the case, we need more Apple’s to stand up and say “no, we won’t do it,” because it’s against the law and the Constitution!
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