The FBI can’t unlock the Texas church shooter’s phone

Yahoo News ^ | 11/7/2017 | David Lumb

[detective]

At a press conference today, an FBI official investigating the man who killed 26 people in a Texas church on Sunday said the agency can't open the shooter's encrypted phone. The agent painted the issue as a growing concern among law enforcement at all levels who can't access data on devices without their owner's credentials. It's essentially the same argument the FBI made two years ago when it demanded Apple help break into the phone of the San Bernardino shooter, a conflict that escalated into the courtroom.

[Pollster1]

And then try to sell me an iphone they claim has encryption? Any other bright ideas?

Someone will sell you an app that double-encrypts your phone. Get in with the Apple key, and the FBI will still have to get past a PGP-equivalent that is beyond the capabilities of even the NSA.

[Right Wing Assault]

The password is "f*** trump"

[DesertRhino]

“I will put his hand under my arm for two minutes— bingo 98.6.”

Freaking awesome,,,lol

[Yaelle]

So you don’t even want law enforcement to be able to check on one phone if there has been a warrant to search that person?

I don’t want all phones to have a key to unencrypt. But for the manufacturer to hand over an opened phone under warrant doesn’t mean that the law abiding phone owners don’t have encrypted phones.

[M Kehoe]

I have the password...

Antifa17

The FBI can send

the money to FR for the FReepathon.

5.56mm

[Steven Tyler]

forgetaboutit, he’s dead

[libertylover]

I can’t imagine that the manufacturer would deny helping in this instance.

Really? Apple wouldn't help get into the San Bernardino shooter's phone and said it was impossible. Then the FBI paid a hacker who broke into it.

[usurper]

If it's unbreakable, then that's the government's problem, not the individual's. You can't ban math—or require that a person store their private key with a third party—just because the math is hard.

So you would be Okay with a company in 1941 selling shortwave radios to the general public with an extra ENIGMA feature during WWII and the company refusing to give the US the codes?

Or a US company that provides secure coms to the mob, drug cartels or Jihadies.

Doesn't make much sense to me. Seems to me that they are providing material support to illegal organizations for the sole purpose of evading law enforcement and crippling the ability of our intelligence agencies to preempt future attacks.

And the worst part is that these companies aren't doing this out of some sense of respect for the constitution they are doing it to make money and marking it that way.

[Tunehead54]

Careful while you're napping ... see above post #45 (http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3602609/posts?page=45#45 ;-)

[Daniel Ramsey]

Total BS

[itsahoot]

We need to pass legislation to ensure that teck companies maintain the keys so that legal warrants can be excised.

Why don't we just pass a law to make it illegal to be a crook or murderer.

[Flick Lives]

They just want a law that makes encryption illegal unless LEO has the key.

---

Exactly! The FBI keeps pushing for this. It is utter B.S.

[Flick Lives]

I don’t want all phones to have a key to unencrypt. But for the manufacturer to hand over an opened phone under warrant doesn’t mean that the law abiding phone owners don’t have encrypted phones.

---

With encryption. Real encryption, not fake encryption. There is no manufacturer’s master key.

[Flick Lives]

Then the FBI paid a hacker who broke into it.

---

It is not hard. Clone the hard drive on the phone, then start a brute force hack on the clone. After 10 tries, the clone self-destructs. Rinse and repeat. Most phones are only secured with a 4 digit locking code, so it is not a big deal.

[Swordmaker]

"What kind of phone. I want one."

The investigators of the Texas Church mass shooting have stated they cannot unlock the shooter's phone. They are not revealing what make the phone is to avoid promoting the brand of phone.

It no doubt is a modern iPhone. Most Android phones do not ship with built in encryption. . . and there are unlocking tools for those that do. However, Apple can provide the data backed up on the iCloud with an appropriately structured search warrant, which it did for the San Bernardino terrorists, and would have been able to unlock the terrorists' iPhone had the FBI not CHANGED the use's AppleID before checking with Apple for advice. That succeeded in permanently locking it. The data the 3rd party got was extremely limited.

Apple iOS Security
Ping!

The latest Apple/Mac/iOS Pings can be found by searching Keyword "ApplePingList" on FreeRepublic's Search.

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me

[itsahoot]

Now Apple have a copy of your fingerprint in storage.

No they don't but the DMV keeps one. If you were ever in the military they took a ten card. Most states require a thumb print on driving license. If you ever had a background check for a government job or a company with government contracts they have your prints. Get over it, your finger print is not stored at Apple or on your phone and is never transmitted anywhere.

Don't worry about prints worry about facial recognition.😄

[Swordmaker]

They have the body. Use the perp’s fingers. Of course, if he has it set to brick after 10 tries, they could have used them up.

If the phone is an iPhone, it is well established that dead fingers will not work. The technology requires living fingers. It does not actually work with the fingerprint, it senses the fully active filled with blood ridges and valleys in the fat pads below the surface of the fingers' skin. Without blood flow, these tissues are completely different than they would be if the tissues are dead, without blood flowing through the fingers.

Apple designed this so that thieves could not just cut fingers of victims to activate iOS devices to get around protections to activate them, change passwords and thus make them salable.

[sargon]

So you would be Okay with a company in 1941 selling shortwave radios to the general public with an extra ENIGMA feature during WWII and the company refusing to give the US the codes?

It seems like that you simply don't understand the mathematical nature of strong encryption. It's something God created, and the fact that encryption might be difficult or impossible to break doesn't mean that you suddenly have to grant the State arbitrary Tyrannical power which violates Unalienable rights.

About those codes: suppose they are in a safe deposit box. And suppose that the government does get a key from somewhere. Now further suppose that the safe deposit box has been buried at a location known only to the suspect—an American citizen.

Now, since the information is theoretically sooooooooo important, does that mean you can torture this American to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his buried safe deposit box? Can you violate due process, if it's really, really important? How about threatening his family? It's a slippery slope, isn't it?

Look man, this branch of math is what it is. It's relentless. Private key/public key cryptography, for example, can be readily engaged in by any American. There's simply no way to require a person to—after generating his key pair—send his private key to Apple or the government.

Universal back doors—which is precisely what you're demanding the government effectively be given—are simply not something you can grant to government, all in the name of expediency. It's so blatantly totalitarian, and such an obvious infringement of Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights that it's ludicrous.

Sorry, man. What you're describing, in toto, is a Tyrannical and unconstitutional situation with limitless State power. You can't say "totalitarianism is OK" just because not being totalitarian means that intelligence gathering becomes difficult for government.

The only way to prevent this whole situation would be for government to ban certain branches of mathematics itself. It's simply not practical...

[DesertRhino]

“So you don’t even want law enforcement to be able to check on one phone if there has been a warrant to search that person?”

No i don’t. If they can do one, then none are secure and their encryption is a farce. Also, it isn’t the job of the manufacturer to serve the warrant. Say the cops have a warrant to search the safe in your house. They can bring saws, blowtorches, Five fingers Vinnie the safecracker, etc.
But what they may NOT do is call Liberty Safes and force them to come down and open it for them.

I am FAR more worried about a government that thinks every bit and byte of data should be within it’s reach than i am about the cops not being able to look into a phone.

Clues about other conspirators etc you say? I say BS, the entire history of terrorism and mass shootings is a cornucopia of clues that they refuse to act on. But they want -more- that they still wont act on.

Also, when the FBI wanted to break the San Bernadino phone, apple offered to try in a manner close to what you suggested. But the FBI insisted that apple build them a tool, and turn it over to the Feds.

This isn’t about one phone.

Last, in light of the utter abuse of every federal agency we have since 9/11 how can you dare suggest this? The IRS, DHS, CIA, NSA, FCC, EPA, DEA, ATF, DOD, BLM, ICE and FBI have all been used to make life miserable for political opponents. Not criminals....political opponents.
They have lost the right to ask for more investigative tools until people like Clapper and Comey are in prison.

[Swordmaker]

“I can’t imagine that the manufacturer would deny helping in this instance.” I can———a lib.

It's more of a conservative position, not Liberal. The problem is that only the user knows the actual password. Apple, if it is Apple, does not have the passcode. . . and the passcode is the key to unlock it. Apple does not have a backdoor into their devices for themselves or for the government, nor is there a means around the number of passcode attempts before the data is permanently erased.