Should Apple help the FBI or no?

Who won?

Not Apple, not Cook, not the discredited UN human rights mob, not the Isheep and not the DoJ for over reaching.

Winners: The Media made $$$millions on clicks and views, Apple competitors seeing it as a marketing opportunity, the FBI for its legal prowess, the company that cracked the Iphone, Snowden indirectly and the families of victims who were slaughtered.

Encryption is the nut that still has a nut cracker stalking it. Privacy advocates are primarily focused on what the DoJ is pressuring the legislature to put into law. This is not just confined to the USA as security versus privacy is a major issue all over the world.

 

Should the FBI help Apple by telling them how their super secure phone was cracked? I vote no.

 

"Super Secure phone" LOL

 

They have more phones to break in, so I'm sure they are not going to tell them. It would be interesting to know if their technique would work on latest OS. I'm sure we'll soon find out.

 

What I heard on a news story about last night is the best response: "Once you have physical access to the device and enough time and money to throw at it, the game is over, it is just a matter of time."

Apples help could have sped it up and that it is what the law enforcement community was after and has been after for some time. There are a lot phones out there they would like to get into and having to work this hard and take so long to get into them is their problem.

On a technical level, they've been portraying this thing in a very disingenuous way. It is never about the phone or device, it is about the data inside of it. The first thing any forensic investigator is going to do is suck the data out of the phone and copy it. Once properly imaged, it can be manipulated and played with in any number of ways. I could imagine multiple copies being brute forced on systems much faster than the original iPhone without any of its data deletion routines among other approaches.

 

Imho nobody won.

Apple could have kept the whole situation (and their attitude) quiet by simply helping, but:
- Now the security of their device is openly discredited, in doubt forever.
- Now this dustup could lead to new, mandatory "back door" legislation.

The FBI could have opened the phone without ever saying anything about it, so that:
- they would not have had to risk a court hearing
... yes, it was a risk ... federal judges in the USA are independant, unpredictable, and appointed for life.
- 2-bit drug dealers and terrorists would continue to feel secure.

Comey and Cook are good chess players or they wouldn't be where they are, so how is it that they didn't see this coming?
Or, maybe, they did see it coming?

 

They saw it coming. As to who won they both did. Proponents of each will remember it that way.

 

Seems to me they both lost more than they gained, but I'm no chess player, and The Apple Dumpling Affair certainly isn't over.