Pleased the FBI and the rule of law won

[capncarl]

There are way too many bad people in the world that make a living stealing from our banks, credit cards and harvesting all manner of information for profit. You seldom hear of anyone being caught, especially the overseas crooks. Where is the FBI when someone commits a cyber crime against you? This happens daily. Apple has provided a relatively safe platform against this kind of crime. My hat is off to Apple for that. Rubbing Apples nose in their success, ( if they really did in fact get into the phone, which I doubt ) is just going to make Apple work harder to build a more secure system.
If the FBI would quit announcing the clever ways that they caught the bad guy the very minute he is in custody maybe the bad guys won't be able to work around their systems and will have to figure it out for themselves.

[JimD]

Hank,

Your reply is helpful for me to understand the other side of this argument. I still do not like the "back door" approach, however, because it does carry the risk of being disclosed inappropriately. Then it doesn't even matter if your phone is password protected. I still do not view the creation of a way, supervised by a court, of allowing more guesses at the password as inappropriate. I don't see that easily being disclosed. And if it's brute force guessing, most criminals would give up.

I do not do banking on my phone but do occasionally make purchases that way. So I guess a criminal could get my credit card number that way. I had somebody steal the number of one of my cards somehow at Christmas time. That was a hassle (CITI was not particularly easy to deal with) but I did not loose any money. I've had it happen before with the same result. So I still do not see risks that convince me I want terrorists phones inaccessible to law enforcement. I believe it is unlikely a criminal would be persistent enough to get past the password, if they did the also need a certain level of sophistication to find the credit card information (and I delete my history regularly which might help) and then even if they start using my credit card, history suggests I will get a phone call, usage will stop, and I will not owe anything in the end. I believe by law my risk is $50/card. So it just is not a huge issue that makes me want to be more at risk of terrorists.

So I think it matters how law enforcement gets access. It should be by a method that minimizes risk of inappropriate disclosure. A method not easily used by criminals. But if that is the case, I think the risks to individuals is not large enough to support creating a new right to absolute cell phone privacy. I don't believe that right exists today - although I will grant it isn't completely clear in current law since we're applying laws that do not explicitly consider current technology.

Comments? (anybody)

Jim

[onedash]

I think this whole thing was make believe. I bet the FBI had the information and they wanted "someone" to believe it was still locked up inside that secure encrypted phone. Make it sound impossible to get so "someone" doesn't alter their plans. Once it was no longer useful release a statement that they got it as to not tip anyone off that they had it all along.

[Grampy122]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemor.../#33ac42a52608

[capncarl]

Articles like the Forbes article really reinforce my trust in them. I suppose they are in a power race with the EPA?

[All Thumbs]

I think this whole thing was make believe. I bet the FBI had the information and they wanted "someone" to believe it was still locked up inside that secure encrypted phone. Make it sound impossible to get so "someone" doesn't alter their plans. Once it was no longer useful release a statement that they got it as to not tip anyone off that they had it all along.

I suspect you're correct, it was all for show.

[gjat]

I think the title of this thread was right on. Both the rule of law AND FBI won. The Law won by not forcing Apple to defeat the phone security and making it available to agencies. FBI won by finding another way to break into the phone WITHOUT Apple's help.

I think a good analogy is having a secure Home Safe that you keep your personal information and valuables as well as contact information for who we talk to and when. For must of us, it's no big deal what we keep there, but for criminals there would be a good reason to keep Law Enforcement out. Let's say the best out there is Banana Safes. They have a system that if your safe is attacked, it melts everything inside to a carbon lump. Criminal Bob commits a horrendous act and the FBI get's a court order to look into his safe, but the danger is they can carbonize everything inside if they do it wrong, so they ask Banana Safe to make a retro-active Master Banana Key that will work on their safes and let the FBI inside. The problem is, once the retro-active Master Banana Key is created, you have to hope and trust it is never used without a court order, stolen from the FBI, given away by a disgruntled FBI agent, etc. For most of us law abiding citizens, we think it's a fair deal to run the risk of abuse to nab Criminal Bob and convict him or prevent his accomplices from pursuing horrific attacks. But there are lots of other potential targets for political and financial gain. How much would it be worth to hack the phones of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk or Taylor Swift?

I think it was a Win/Win situation in that it took great effort to hack the security, and that Apple was not forced to make it easy.

[LCHIEN]

...

I think it was a Win/Win situation in that it took great effort to hack the security, and that Apple was not forced to make it easy.

It just postponed an unpleasant discussion until later.
Enemies using unconventional means and every weakness of our system which presumes innocence cleverly to undermine and attack us slowly and deliberately. At some point it may become necessary to sink to their level.

An enemy who does not think twice about killing women and children, who abuse women and people of other religions. Well you are in a disadvantage if you can't kill them without a trial or worry about their wives and friends. People who don't fear your kinds of punishment are not going to be deterred by your laws.

[JimD]

I agree that deterrence doesn't work well with people who are dedicated enough to do suicide bombing. But the top terrorists don't do it, they convince impoverished followers to do it. But still deterrence is quite questionable. That is why I think it is so important to find them before they can carry out their plans. They are not afraid of punishment, at least the ones carrying out the attacks are not. So we need to use every possible means to find them quickly before they attack.

Ultimately as long as there are people who feel justified in these sort of attacks - against innocent people - they will happen. We can prevent some but not all such attacks. The only way to prevent them entirely would be to change the minds and hearts of the terrorists.

[leehljp]

It isn't the Feds that I worry about, its the hackers who can and do find out what the Feds know and then how to exploit it.

Case in point; Hackers can listen in to your phone calls and read your messages.:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-hac...tag=TREc64629f

Somewhat different info on the same article:
http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/18/ss7-ha...e-congressman/

WE knew that the government could do this. And if the government stops it, then they may not be able to listen in. IN the mean time, corporate and private financial information (code/passwords) is readily available.

This is not about my private stuff from the gov but from hackers. And this is only one of the issues we know about. It is outside of the Phone Lock controversy - but real, none - the less.

Can phone calls be over a type of VPN? Is VPN secure?