The president… made it clear he didn’t see why phones should be off limits. If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device where there is no key, no door at all, how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we disrupt a terrorist plot?
How do we identify pot dealers so we can SWAT their homes in the middle of the night? How do we identify the gun owners? How do we identify people who say unsupportive things about Mohammedans? Or, kulaks who selfishly withhold property that should be shared for the common good?
“It’s fetishizing our phones above every other value,” he said. “And that can’t be the right answer. If [the government] can’t get in, then everyone is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket.”
By “Swiss Bank Accounts,” he meant, “A distressing amount of privacy and personal liberty.
I don’t know, a lot of conservatives seem to be on board with Obama’s line of thinking. I swear, some act like they would walk into a concentration camp while smiling and whistling “You’re a Grand Old Flag” if Obama said “it’ll help us fight ISIS.”
To some degree, I agree with BHO.
Of course, I don’t think gov’t should be granted carte blanche to snoop “just because” but there is a legitimate national interest in being able to access data in a criminal investigation. Directing Apple to unlock a specified phone is not much different than directing a locksmith to open a safe.
Uncrackable encryption is a boon for our enemies, criminals, and terrorists. If the Nazis had had iPhone-level encryption, WW-II would have ended with a lot more death and destruction. Klaus Fuchs may never have been discovered if he’d had an iPhone (or a PC) to use for data transfer. No need for dead drops, micro dots, and all the other ways used to spirit secrets away.
Perhaps the issue isn’t that Apple (or MSFT or Google…) can be required to assist in an investigation. The issue is that we don’t trust gov’t to adhere to the Const. requirement for “probable cause”. That’s a different issue – the issue that needs to be #1.
Domestic surveillance is just one of many side-effects of open borders. Since we’re unwilling to secure the border, we’re forced to secure the interior. Of course, gov’t doesn’t operate with precision (it’s more like a runaway steam roller or Sherman tank).
@ KCRob: I hear you. Personally, I would be very interested in finding out what’s on the phone. But I’m still concerned about concerned about what precedent it could set. There just seems to be a subset of conservatives who immediately label anybody who has any misgivings about the government unlocking the phone as an Islamist sympathizer.
First, some on the Obama admin. want to outlaw the $100-bill. Others in the Admin. want unfettered-access to our phones where they simultaneously want us to store our iDollars, PayPal balances and Apple-Money and make cash “obsolete”.. And the law that allows them to
compulsory-purchase at well-below market-ratesconfiscate our gold and silver is still legal …and on the books. They already have access to our bank and brokerage accounts. Once the redistributionitst have an unassailable-hold over the SCOTUS they’ll just grab-everything, …and it will be legal and without recourse to the Courts.And every dollar in your Roth IRA and 401(k) can be taxed, even at confiscatory-rates if they want. The “tax-free” and “tax-differed” is just a promise-made (pinkie-swear), with no legal Force of Law on future legislation. They can tax income, gains, and even the capital without limit.
” Directing Apple to unlock a specified phone is not much different than directing a locksmith to open a safe.”
No, it’s not.
Once a safe has been opened, the combination can be reset, making it as secure as before. That’s not nearly the case here. Apple would have to rewrite the OS, and that new OS will be documented six ways from Sunday. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. If the terrorist’s phone is the the primary way law enforcement has to develop information, then their intelligence capabilities are woefully inadequate.
Think about how much of your life is on your phone. Do you really want to allow government unlimited access to it? There are no protections if some bureaucrat takes an interest in your activities, as recent NSA actions have rendered the 4th Amendment ineffectual if not outright useless.
In a free society there should be some sacrosanct areas of privacy: there cannot be freedom without that. The Founder’s knew this, but we’ve slowly forgotten it. I’m firmly on Apple’s side here.
I’ve been an advocate of extending the Fifth Amendment’s bar on self-incrimination to include locked diaries. I don’t see this as being much different.
If law enforcement can’t gather enough information by a court ordered tap on the traffic coming and going from the phone, they are really poor at it.
Yes, they are. It’s a big reason why ‘burner’ phones are still popular with the criminal element. And let’s not forget that the male San Bernadino terrorist wouldn’t have had the freedom to put whatever on his iPhone if the employer who gave it to him put some restrictions on it. Yet Apple is the bad guy who wants the terrorists to win.
And for the people who think that gub’mint spying is okay as long as there’s “due process” with warrants and such, I would point out that most of the requests for searches and surveillance with respect to terrorist investigations go through FISA courts, which, to the best of my knowledge, have never denied a request. When the check in the system becomes a rubber stamp, there is no balance.
Let’s look at this mess for the standpoint of who really caused the mess in the first place.
The owner of this phone is not the dead terrorist, it is the county GOVERNMENT. This GOVERNMENT paid a monthly fee to 3rd party vendor to maintain control over the password/encryption properties of the phone. The GOVERNMENT chose not to install this software on the phone. Therefore, as we have seen many times, the GOVERNMENT is at fault.
This particular phone will not yeild any worthwhile information. The terrorists destroyed two other phones that most likely contained the most useful information. Why would they destroy all harddrives and phones except this one? The GOVERNMENT knows this. The GOVERNMENT is using this high profile phone to set the precedent for the 100’s of other phones across the country that the GOVERNMENT wants access to.
My prediction : Apple will make an 11th hour “compromise” to unlock this one phone. Nothing of value will be found on this phone. The GOVERNMENT will not tell us that. The GOVERNMENT will then place a massive order for Apple products (Apple can use the bump in sales). A flurry of court orders will unlock phones in the possession of LE across the country.
As we can see, the root of all this mess is the GOVERNMENT.
I seem to remember that Obama issued an EO that deemed the location data held by a service provider of a device is obtainable without a warrant.
I am still baffled by the supposed ethics privacy corolla which encircles the entire instant communications reality. When you chose to take what is safely encoded in your brain cells and transmit it to outside of your cranium, it is no longer private. Period. Once the bullet has left the chamber, you can’t call it back, but you damn sure bear the responsibility for having pulled the trigger.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, and all the rest are voluntary attachments to your thinking and musing which consolidate your instant communication meanderings and build an instant profile of where you are and what you are probably doing and what you are likely to choose to do next or soon. You put that information out there to be analyzed by algorithms created specifically to snoop on you.
Apple is not the honorary Big Brother who does not tell. Apple is all about “telling” the cloud and accumulating personal factoids which are then strung together in a sort of The Picture of Dorian Gray replete with a leit motif of moral duplicity and self-indulgence.
We seem to be arguing over whether Apple should be water boarded in an attempt to get it to crack its own security code. But we are actually arguing over whether Apple, the great whore of instant communication, is permitted to be conveniently virginal under some corporate guise of protecting the privacy of its users when and if it chooses. (“Siri, where can I get laid?” Siri: “Sorry, but I will not answer such a question.” Siri, where can I get drunk?” Siri: “You are sitting in the nearest bar.”)
We have willingly brought these creepy-peepy devices into our daily lives and our most intimate worlds. We have only ourselves to blame when we get caught out by the “searchers.” Even the dumbest people know to shred the hard drive. If your Smart TV is watching you in bed, throw a blanket over it or suffer the consequences.
So, horny men paid for a fantasy on Ashley Madison with 5.5 million female profiles that were most likely created by an algorithm to keep the horny fantasy-seeking Johns paying for more. And then the Johns got “outed” by nasty old hackers. Oh, my.
Apple is fighting for its respectability in an Ashley-Madison-effect world of cyber babble gone crazy. And someone still thinks there is a “privacy” ethic at stake?
We need to be reminded what Ben Franklin said, “Those who are willing to surrender an essential liberty to obtain a little temporary security, deserve neither security nor liberty.
@5: Blair – No, iOS would not need to change.
The way encryption on current iPhones work is that a unique encryption key exists in hardware which encrypts/decrypts data moving between memory and the processor. They key is unique to each phone and cannot be revealed by software.
Early iPhones didn’t have this ability and “wiping” a phone took some time as each page of FLASH memory had to be erased.
Newer iPhones (4+, I think) can be wiped by simply forgetting the unique key. This takes milliseconds. Once lost, the contents of the FLASH memory are lost (could be reveled if the key could be cracked but that’s not always practical even with today’s fast computers).
When the iPhone prompts for your PIN, it gives you ten tries to get it right. If you fail, the key gets forgotten. All that Apple needs to do it apply a software patch that allows more than ten tries.
If Apple wants to retain that patch within its labs and requires that the work be done in its lab – I’ve zero issue with that.
Pretty good description here:
http://forums.imore.com/ios-7/269652-how-do-i-enable-ios-encryption-does-just-work.html
I would suggest that folks who are truly interested in this subject to read about the Church Committee in the 1970’s.
That is when we learned that the Government was opening citizens mail since the 1950’s without any oversight.
The cast of characters, findings and fallout is quite interesting.
Not all content on a phone is transmitted anywhere. Similar to a hard drive on a computer. Requiring a warrant is the same. Just because the storage device is portable does not change the privacy expectation of the contents.
If I keep a hand written journal in a bound paper book that I carry with me everywhere, a warrant is needed for LE to examine my journal without my permission. A phone is no different.
The forcing apple to break it, because they can’t is entirely false. All they would need is a single tech guy worthy of working at staples.
They could copy the chip that checks the password and simply run each copy of the chip 10 times in the event the 10 till delete function is on. All it does is add more work if the function was activated which they wont know until they run 10 passwords. But I will grant there might not be any govt worker smart enough to do so.
@ #13 tnnsne1:
In fact, because the storage device is portable it is more likely subject to seizure.
To “be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” is a wonderful protection guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Now we get to play the game of what constitutes “unreasonable” and what qualifies as a “valid” warrant.
Does anyone contest the legal right of the cops to have the cell phone in question in their possession?
If you accidentally leave your notebook on the seat of the bus and it includes plans for blowing up Gotham, does that preclude the cops from acting on the information?
The fact is that neither you nor I can adequately define “privacy” let alone make sweeping laws with either protect it or shred it. That is akin to why the social justice warriors have so much fun bending the concept of “justice” into every possible contortion of meaning.
A bit of clarification. That ’10-and-done’ security feature is optional, and user- or owner-activated. The IT person for Riverside County remotely enabled it on the iPhone in question after his fellow employee and wife carried out their attack. (Though it may seem to be a generous allowance, I have not enabled that feature in any of my iOS devices, should I put any away for a long period and then have problems remembering it later on.) It’s also worth noting that the most common form of iOS password is a four-digit numeric entry, similar to a debit/ATM card PIN. Such codes are relatively easy to crack, other security features notwithstanding.
And yet, the presumed nominee for President as a Democrat seems to think she made a pretty good funny by mentioning wiping her server “like, with a cloth” when asked about such matters in the past. Sometimes ‘clever’ is not the same as ‘bright’ (and I won’t even mention the word ‘competent’).