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Is This Fishy?

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sp1814 | 00:14 Tue 29th Mar 2016 | News
9 Answers
The day before the court case was due to start, the U.S. government suddenly found a way into the terrorists' iPhone.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/28/apple-fbi-case-dropped-san-bernardino-iphone

Brings to mind the sudden recollection that Paul Burrell was given sanction to remove Princess Diana's personal effects the day before he was due to stand trail for theft.
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yeah I wondered the same
left wing conspiracy ....

but I think there is somehting else - perhaps a leak ?
otherwise you would just hack it and pretend you hadnt and carry on with the case

The case was about being able to hack everyone else 's iPad and not just the terrorists'

and Paul Burrell - eek that is rather a non sequitur - he was in the middle of a trial for theft. His defence had always been permission
The only person who gave it ( the Queen ) was non compellable
and recovered her memory ( hooray ! ) on day 5 or whenever

wiki says public interest immunity certificate - possibly
certainly a bit irregular if it was
No, not really, the case had already been rolling on for well over a month.
I presume that this mystery person, who has come forward with a way to hack into the phone, must be a rogue Apple employer....I may be wrong but that what it looks like to me.

But I don't really understand Apple's position about this affair. Its of great importance that the data on the phone is looked....it might even be called an issue of national importance, as the terrorists may have been planning further outrages. So why hasn't Apple been cooperating with the Government ?
I can't access your link, but why do you think it's fishy?
This was announced some days ago that they believed they had a way into the phone.

So no, not fishy in this case.

If I was the US though I would start files on all Apple execs.
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mikey4444

The problem is - the US government were not asking to get into this iPhone. They wanted Apple to develop an unsecured version of the operating system which could be used by officials to gain access to *any* iPhone.

Apple had been working with government security agents for weeks, helping them to get into the phone. Then someone reset the phone pass code (whilst it was in the hands of law enforcement officers) which meant they they could not access backup data.

It's almost as if it was done deliberately on this phone so the government would have an easily supportable case in order to get this unsecured operating system backdoor developed.
I'm not sure the story of how the FBI broke into the phone is out yet. There is some suspicion, I think, that they were helped by a security service/company from outside the US, but how true that speculation is I don't know. We'll have to wait for the FBI to make an official statement, if they fell so inclined. At any rate, I don't think there's anything particularly fishy about it.

Mikey -- the principal reason for Apple's position is that, while there is no doubt that accessing this person's phone would be beneficial for national security, the manner they were asked to do it was not. Phone security protects the innocent along with the guilty, and compromising that security deliberately would therefore endanger the innocent (who might want to protect, say, private life or private emails or just anything personal). More to the point, the "back-door" they would have had to create wouldn't just be open-able by the FBI, but by everybody -- including people who would love to use any information they can get of a person's phone for criminal activities of all sorts -- right the way from basic blackmail up to full-scale fraud and identity theft. In that sense it's vital to try and preserve general phone security where possible.

I suppose a secondary point is that it's not clear that deliberately sabotaging Apple Security would achieve much anyway. Certain apps, many of them freely available, provide their own security anyway that's independent of Apple's systems. So breaking the first one would leave the second still secure, thus compromising Apple's general security while leaving anyone so inclined, including the intended targets of criminals, free to keep what they are saying private anyway. From a purely business viewpoint, it's hardly in Apple's interests to release a system and software that are deliberately broken when competitors aren't subject to the same court order.

What it was never about, then, was protecting terrorists. Apple wanted to protect their customers' privacy -- and, of course, their reputation as a secure service.
The terrorists had destroyed their personal phones before the the attack. This phone was a work phone, and the terrorists decide not to destroy it, presumably because there is nothing of interest on it. The FBI do not need to get into this phone because the NSA will already have the data anyway.

This was due to go to court on Tuesday, but Apple had the upperhand and the FBI were probably going to lose, so they withdrew the action.

As I wrote last month...

// The FBI request is disingenuous. It is not anything on this phone they are particularly interested in, it is the ability to get into everyones phones in the future, that this request is aimed at establishing. //
21:59 Wed 17th Feb 2016
The Israeli Security firm is a total red herring. They may have been employed as a decoy, but the ability to open this phone exists in the US security apparatus.

The decision to pull the lawsuit was political from high up, maybe from the President even. They did not want this debate now, and in public.

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