land of the free. 
Apple Refuses Court Order Over Phone Encryption
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Well there you go, who'd a thunk it!
If there is a Pandora's box here then it is apple that's making it in the first place because from the creation of the various postal services to the legal court ordered search warrants law enforcement has up until this point had the ability and the right to go through your shit when they have good reason to do so.
Now we are saying that they don't have that right and I'm a little concerned about who is deciding that because for all the talk here about freedom who decided Apple were the judge and jury of what the best policy is and how damaging the results of this change in policy is going to be.
The digitisation of human communication complicates this debate. I don't think state agencies, anywhere in the world, are in any position to demand the private communications of its citizens are 'open' to exposure on the public record. Of course the irony of me posting this view on an Internet forum is not lost on me!
as far as terrorism is concerned the government should be able to get information wherever possible. But honestly, do we think they are going to have resoucers to listen on millions of people even if they wanted to? They will simply listening in on suspects.Not a Rand Paul fan then I take it ?
What about smartphone apps ?
you say the wrong word, and you become a suspect.
any guy with a turbant in his head is a suspect? how is a suspect defined?
edit. imagine a poor arab guy texting her girlfriend: "i have a massive bomb in my pants, ready to make it explode in your *******"
a software crap will beep some alarm somewhere and someone will have a nice listening.
I believe the government needs to have the authority to take action to stop attacks. I seriously doubt it is going after every utterence.
The government can even now listen in. I believe this request was to find out who they were in contact with. That is a reasonable request.
they already monitor phones, again I'm guessing they are too busy monitoring our allies when we have terrorists walking in the states.
in this case, yes, is reasonable.
Can apple just get the info at their own secret quarters and then give it to the government? instead of a masterkey?
they can surely just put in their user aggrement, something like "if you use the phone for terrorist activities, the privacy agreement is void and we can access your data to give it to the government, when ordered by a judge"
I have no idea about the technicalities. Sounded like encription issues. no idea. But Apple needs to work with the government. We live in an age honestly...do we really think we have total freedom? Perhaps watching too much X Files.
Will be easy if we learn from Israel how they do it, profiling will be the first step and on this case the couple would be watched and a tragedy didn't had to happen. Profiling is wrong but better than moving from the land of freedom to the land of surveillance, first we give TSA too much power at airports, then NSA spying our phones, computers and credit cards, then patriot act, whats next?
A search warrant has always been that, just digital now. The judge has always been our last line of defense. And this isn't a request so that the info can be made public, just that the FBI can look at it as part of their investigation.
It has further implications, but not even as broad from what I read on Tech Insider, because its an older IPhone.
I think NSA and mass surveillance is a reality that's here to stay.
But, if the US is remotely serious about their 4th amendment, they could do it like this:
Store every email, like they do now.
Search for words, like they do now.
Have a warrant from a court to open the emails of those that are hits from the searches. Investigate from there.
Instead of:
Store every email, browse them at leisure (and stalk your exes while you're at it)
I know it still goes against "illegal search and seizure" but this is not as big an intrusion.
But, if the US is remotely serious about their 4th amendment, they could do it like this:
Store every email, like they do now.
Search for words, like they do now.
Have a warrant from a court to open the emails of those that are hits from the searches. Investigate from there.
Instead of:
Store every email, browse them at leisure (and stalk your exes while you're at it)
I know it still goes against "illegal search and seizure" but this is not as big an intrusion.
Just wrap your phone in tin foil to match that hat of yours and you'll be fine.
Fwiw, I'd let the government listen and watch me through my phone 24/7 if that means they'd catch a few lunatics and save the lives of countless people. I have nothing to hide and my life isn't that interesting that I should fear what info they can gather from me.
Another thing is what Google does and what more people seem to find ok; gathering all the fecking info on everyone just so they can make money from third parties who will spam the shit out of you. They are not saving any lives with their spying..
Another thing is what Google does and what more people seem to find ok; gathering all the fecking info on everyone just so they can make money from third parties who will spam the shit out of you. They are not saving any lives with their spying..
I think it comes down to, do you trust the government to only use that information for saving lives instead of misusing it? I haven't seen any tangible evidence of increased surveillance leading to better security. In every terrorist attack, there seems to be information already available to the authorities that would have alerted them to it, but it was just not noticed amidst the massive pile of data they already collect.
I don't love Google's spying either, but at least they are upfront about what they do with your information. With the government, you never know because they just lie and get away with it.
Misusing it in what way though? In my case, the only thing they could do me for is smoking the occasional doobie, and I'm guessing for 99% of the population it'd be similar. Which I honestly don't think they'll use all this for. But even then, I think I would be ok with it, as long as the main aim is to get that 1% who is really up to no good and it helps them make some progress on this part. For me personally safety edges privacy. I know I see it a bit simplistic but that's how I feel.
Being uninteresting & uninformed, no way to go through life
It could be worse, I could have been... ah, nevermind.
But this is about much more than the equivalent of issuing a search warrant. The equivalence here is giving the state the keys to a private company's intellectual property. It's then carte blanche for the state to do as they please with that information.
I'm not surprised it's apple rejecting this, they are notoriously secretive about their technological innovations. Google on the other hand have made a virtue out of tracking private citizens and monitoring us.
One has to ask oneself the question, why does the FBI want the keys to apple's tech? The reality is the information they need to prosecute someone through phone based evidence is already available through your carrier/network; texts, voicemails, dialled numbers, received calls and GPS coordinates can all be picked up once a warrant is issued from that data.
To me this is not a case about data protection at all; it's more related to the intellectual property rights of the biggest firm in the world. Simply handing apple's secrets over to the state could have far reaching implications not just for privacy of citizens but for the privacy of private enterprise. I don't agree with that, particularly in the area of digital communications where we should be able to communicate globally without fear of the encroaching and inevitable surveillance society.
Surveillance of suspects is one thing. But handing over the keys to the kingdom that is private enterprise is entirely another thing. Apple are right, allow the state access to encryption codes on an 'old' iPhone and before you know it they'll have access to everything piece of private data on file in Cupertino.
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Nope, it's unacceptable. For a tiny fraction of the population that's doing illegal things you cannot excuse monitoring the whole population. Privacy is everyone's right. Whether you personally want to surrender it or not is your choice though, so I am not going to question that.
I think more and more I am starting to agree with Raoul on this. I don't want to agree with his position but I think some of the arguments against it have blinders for one single issue of privacy and haven't accepted that the world has changed and if terrorists are using these tools we should try to monitor them.
I suspect apple doesn't really give a feck about you or your privacy but instead is fighting to retain control over it's own system security and it's customer's information/privacy. The likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and various governments seem to be staking out their territory in a war over our data and privacy. To do so under the guise of security concerns is a very very old story. Ben Franklin knew it when he said “Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh?/ Put the pussy in a sarcophagus/ Now she claiming that I bruised her oesophagus”.
Exactly. Surely will be precedent setting too, which is why I'm so interested. A hell of a lot at stake.
More & more people are of similar mind in the USofA I gather with the terror paranoia really kicking off with WMDs & Bush 15 years ago - conveniently ignored since then, of course, are the web of lies to prop up this paranoia and endless warring to fuel it further. There's no rallying cry atm that gets a violent group more crazed than rhetoric concerning potentially more violence. Looking for cooler heads to prevail & trying to walk back from that ledge and they seem to get more incensed, not sure there's an end in sight that doesn't involve all out war
Just a reminder that most Americans will only have themselves to blame for their willful relinquishing of rights & privacy in the new age, pinning their hopes on government & private corporations having their best interests at heart with state surveillance - that never went awry in history. Not sure you can argue with that sort of naiveté
Especially if it goes to the Supreme Court. It's a very interesting one for sure.
I wonder how many people on the Caf have encryption turned on on their Android phones? I had turned mine on, until a lastpass bug turned it off again!
https://lastpass.com/support.php?cmd=showfaq&id=8936
It's worth pointing out that Apple have won numerous government contracts because of how secure their system is. From military contracts, to senators, to just normal staff. We've all seen what happens when civil servants leave thumb drives and laptops around which aren't encrypted. Even ones that are encrypted tend to be cumbersome to the extreme, and expensive in IT support.
Didn't Orwell write something about a wonderful utopia where everyone was watched and it was great?
How do you check Android encryption?
It's probably different in the US, but over here I've been on jury service for a case involving crack/heroin dealers where they had a huge list of all the numbers that had been called/received from the numbers attributed to said dealers, as well as when a text was sent, but they didn't actually have what was sent.
I still don't know why they didn't have that, but I'm guessing it's not straightforward to obtain. Maybe they'd go to bigger effort for more serious threats, and I'm sure they could tap into stuff owned by people who are identified as a major threat, but I think this is more an issue of having quick access to someone's correspondence who has only just been identified as a potential threat.
I'm torn, myself.
He sure did. Would love him to be around today to see where the world has gone. The overt totalitarianism that inspired his work may not exist but I wonder what he'd have to say about the role of state surveillance. Probably something along the lines of "I told you so". Anyone on here read 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers?
For me I think this whole debate is quite simple. I completely agree with using the existing laws and legislation to allow our security services monitor potential threats. And, as far as I can tell, the law allows for plenty of scope to do that.
In this case the state are looking to 'crack the code' that Apple has developed, opening up that organisations hard earned secure systems to potentially invasive 'interested parties' i.e. Competitors, Foreign Governments, Hackers. Why should Apple agree to that under the guise of 'national security'?
The state has ample powers of surveillance already. People may not like it but this case is taking Big Brother in a very dangerous direction.
Yeah, definitely agree with that. The more doors you open, the more potential for further doors creaking open down the line.
I don't think theres a single argument for creating an encryption back door.
I agree,
They're using the narrative that this will stop terrorists, and it's simply not true. There's nothing to suggest that this will prevent terrorist attacks.
The current climate around the Paris Attacks, ISIS etc. makes it convenient to use public emotion to try and make Apple look like they're the bad guys in the situation.
Glad to see Whatsapp (Facebook) and Google unite with Apple on this.
To be fair, I think that Brave New World was far more accurate on how the system will be than 1984.
Removing encryption (because that is what will eventually be if this thing start happening) will be a nice step towards 1984 though.
I was led to believe the authorities could very easily pull standard text and call content from the carriers, but stuff like whatsapp is more difficult...
Happy to be corrected.
Happy to be corrected.
Is this about Apple devising software to read encrypted messages or just finding a way to remove the auto-erase function?
If it's the latter I'm sure Apple could help and find a way to keep the method secret. It's not beyond them.
Isn't that why Cameron (the dope) wanted to ban WhatsApp?
In my mind, that would be a risk that goes back to my original post. If Apple share a method, there's the risk of the government using it whenever they can justify it and all of the future risks of weak morals that go with that. If they just implement something, it is possible that could be reverse engineered by analysing what has been changed. Might be hard to do, or it might be very easy to spot that.