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Apple Refuses To Create Iphone Back Door

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Ellipsis | 13:26 Wed 17th Feb 2016 | News
76 Answers
Background news story here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35594245

Apple statement here:

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Is Apple correct to defy their Government's wishes in this way? Or should they do everything possible to help investigate this act of terrorism?
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Good job the people working at Bletchley Park didn't have all this trouble.
00:41 Thu 18th Feb 2016
Ymb

I would be grateful if you would post your email address and password. I am positive there is nothing illegal there , so you have nothing to hide. I have signed the official secrets act and been CRB checked, so your personal details will be perfectly safe.
Please post your login details quickly as I have a few hours available for teading this morning. It will make a change from AB.
"Dogsbody2 - You clearly know a lot less than you think."

That's pretty rich coming from someone who started this thread by thinking the US intelligence organisation is called the NSI and traitor Snowden has two Os in his surname.

You can pontificate about this topic all you like on here, but one has to read widely and possess the ability of critical thinking to persuade people.
Dogsbody2
Speaking of the NSA, odd that you think it is perfectly acceptable that they can take everyone's data, yet when Snowden then took that data, you call it stealing?

As with Ymg, I invite you to publish your email details on here, as you obviously have no problem sharing your private data.
Question Author
The Bletchley Park analogy is interesting.

Were Turing, Flowers and their teams heroes for hacking the Nazis' communications and shortening WWII by two years, or were they worse than the Nazis themselves for hacking into those communications?

Bletchley Park = FBI; Enigma = iPhone; Nazis = ISIS: is that a fair analogy?
Gromit
Yet again your ideas are found wanting through lack of critical thinking (of the implications).
There is no evidence that NSA/GCHQ share any data acquired with other organisations or dump it on public websites (as you are suggesting would be a good idea for one to do).
Suggest you investigate further what 'metadata' is. I mentioned it earlier and no-one has picked up on it.
I put it to you that there are layers of private data and, in looking for the ISIS needle-candidates in the global haystack of data, one looks for patterns first - not what Mr Gromit has been saying to his mates. Only when enough patterns match does further interrogation of the data occur (including the message content).

Security agencies have responded to traitor Snowden's revelations by explaining this much, but it clearly hasn't had any impact with you yet.

Meanwhile, Apple continue to try to maintain the moral high ground - the contents of the phone might be useful and the NSA would like to get inside it. That's enough justification as far as I'm concerned.
The FBI (or NSA) are no Bletchley Park.

Turing did not have to ask the Enigma machine manufacturer to make the machine easy to decipher. And Bletchley Park were not spying on every Briton.

So the analogy does not quite work.
// There is no evidence that NSA/GCHQ share any data acquired with other organisations //

No. They are just careless with their (our) data. They allow it to be stolen. Manning, Snowden, Wikileaks, they were leaking like a sieve. An appalling record for a security agency.
A bit embarrassing when my personal phone is more secure than the Governments agency tasked with keeping national secrets.
Question Author
> Turing did not have to ask the Enigma machine manufacturer to make the machine easy to decipher.

I'm sure he would love to have asked, and for them to do so. But, being the enemy, they would not have complied. Apple is hardly the enemy of the FBI, but they are supplying equipment to the enemies of the FBI and then refusing to help the FBI when its enemies use that equipment ...
Gromit - try investigating metadata instead of trying to change the direction of the debate.

Manning/Wikileaks are the same data leak.

At the end of the day, every system relies on humans at point in the interface with the systems that hold the data. Organisations (or every size and complexity) take steps to mitigate risk, be it data loss, blackmail whatever.

One can take as many steps in a security vetting process as one likes, including continuous review, making systems dependent on interlocks requiring several humans (to seek to avoid a single mole screwing things up). But it relies on human control of the interfaces.

Manning and Snowden signed contracts with their Government, promising to do certain things and not do certain other things. They broke those promises, and the interlocks failed on those occasions. Hardly a careless acts by Government.

Drawing the analogy back to Bletchley Park, it is a credit to the people involved (who also signed the Official Secrets Act) that details what was done there, involving a similar number of people, remained intact and secret until around 25 years AFTER the mid-70s, when part of code-breaking details were declassified.

Not sure why you keep prattling on about metadata.
If there are any iMessages on the iPhone, the metadata will just tell you the data is an iMessage, but the contents are encrypted. Tells you precisely nothing.
My personal opinion of iPhones is that they are sold to the public at grossly over charged prices. I strongly object to the fact that they are difficult to get into & unlike all other cell phones if the battery packs up the phone has to be sent to Apple for a battery to be fitted( at the blown up prices they charge) or you buy a new phone.
Question Author
Lee Rigby's family have criticised Apple:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35595840

The article is worth a read if, for nothing else, the short video clip at the top from Chris Foxx which lays out exactly what the FBI is looking for:

1) the ability to circumvent the "wipe iPhone after 10 attempts" feature, which is an optional setting (i.e. not all iPhones do this)
2) the ability to circumvent the delay feature, which means that as you go through the 10 attempts, you have to wait longer between each attempt - e.g. hours rather than a few second (i.e. this is not a quick way to wipe an iPhone)
3) the ability to try multiple PINs electronically, rather than by hand

Taken together, the above three requests would suggest that what they're after is the ability to gain entry to a physical iPhone via a simple brute force attack (trying up to 1 million PINs).

One rather good point made by Lee Rigby's uncle was: "If a court issued a warrant in the UK or United States to search somebody's house, you wouldn't stop them, you would allow them in - why should a smartphone be any different?" If that somebody had a sophisticated security system on their house, and the supplier of that system refused to cooperate with the legal authorities to allow them to gain entry to the house, then that supplier would be doing the equivalent of what Apple is doing ...
Why would the FBI investigators be interested in what Gromit has on his phone, they wouldn't, but what they are interested in, is terrorism and if any information can be gained from this terrorists phone that could alert them of yet another pending terrorist attack, then surely that has to be a good thing?
are we agreed at all on WHY the authorities want to get their sticky biscuit barrel fingers on the secure phone data ?

there are a few who are saying - "o well it doesnt matter as they can do it remotely using a scrombogulator anyway" - an argument that has to be false as they ( authorities ) would not have started the fight in the first place

and others who say that it doesnt matter as the voice stream is transmitted uncoded in plaintext which sounds obviously false to me

and tohers saying well it cant be the contact humbers as they have got them anyway

so what are they gonna use the new data for ?

O and congrats everyone for having a thread where the Migrant Threat is not the leader ....
That's a rather good analogy about a court ordered warrant to enter one's house. Would everyone be happy, in this country, if a British court order was obtained? ( I know it's not, strictly speaking, what this story is about)
// Were Turing, Flowers and their teams heroes for hacking the Nazis' communications and shortening WWII by two years, or were they worse than the Nazis themselves for hacking into those communications? //

o my god where did this thought come from ?

[ Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death, MacB]

gay boy Turing as worse than a Nazi - ho hum revisionist history marches on. When it first came out that the British had broken the Nazi codes for the duration of the war one asked - why didnt the British march into Berlin the next day ?

does anyone realised that NSA-GCHQ have very strong links and have done so since 1942 ( BRUSA ) and then 1945 UKUSA ? - there was even a dedicated transatlantic cable laid to carry enigma messages to arlington hall for decryption. GCHQ broke the emperors codes ( esp JN-25) extensively in the pacific war
Question Author
> are we agreed at all on WHY the authorities want to get their sticky biscuit barrel fingers on the secure phone data ?

No!

> an argument that has to be false as they ( authorities ) would not have started the fight in the first place

I suspect that the authorities (maybe not all of them, but at least the NSA) CAN actually hack into an iPhone, and that Apple knows (or at least strongly guesses) this. i.e. that this whole news story is a smokescreen that:

* makes terrorists think that they're safe using iPhones when they're not - cunning NSA
* makes Apple happy that their iPhones are in the headline news for their security features - cool Apple

It's a win-win! Or is that too much of a conspiracy theory?
Question Author
> Would everyone be happy, in this country, if a British court order was obtained?

I would be. But then, I think I live in a civilised society and I think I have nothing to hide ...
// Why would the FBI investigators be interested in what Gromit has on his phone,//

AOG RIPA was extensively used not to identify mustachioed muslims about to chop up people in their beds
but to identify punters whose dogs had crapped in the street

( RIPA - regulation of investigatory powers act )

and people are qutite rightly worried history will repeat itself ( again )

it is well established law that the title of an act of parliament does NOT constitute part of the law. So the provisions of the prevention of terrorism act do NOT have to be used only to prevent terrorism. See comment about dog shut earlier
I agree with aog's last point!
With a caveat that a balance has to be struck of course between personal privacy and public safety.
There is a misconception that GCHQ,NSA are spying on everybody
What has happened is that communication has become such that it's impossible often to separatethe comms of the good guys (us) from the 'bad guys' (everyone else, of course).

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