FBI Threatens Apple with Asset
Seizure if Won't Open iPhone II
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Posted on 03/14/2016 8:47:42 AM PDT by dennisw
The FBI could demand that Apple turns over its source code and private key to the iPhone's operating system, the Justice Dept. implied in its latest filing against the tech giant.
The government's response aims to target a critical argument made by Apple -- that compelling the company to rewrite its iOS software to remove security features in order to allow federal agents to bypass the passcode on the San Bernardino shooter's phone would be overly "burdensome."
"The government did not seek to compel Apple to turn those over because it believed such a request would be less palatable to Apple," said federal prosecutors in a footnote in its March 10 filing. "If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple programmers."
Some case watchers saw the citation as more indicative of a threat than a technological suggestion.
A Justice Dept. spokesperson said the agency will "let the filing speak for itself," but added the citation in question was an alternative, rather than a position taken.
By its own admission, the Justice Dept. set this precedent in its 2013 case against Lavabit, the encrypted email provider said to have been used by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
"I think [the government] is setting up the possibility of demanding the key and the source code," said Lavabit founder Ladar Levison, speaking on the phone.
Levison drew parallels between his case and the fight that Apple currently has on its hands.
He too was compelled by the government to provide "technical assistance" to help the FBI install a pen register device to obtain metadata on an Lavabit account -- thought to be Snowden's but that was never formally confirmed as the case remains under seal. Levison forcibly shut down his encrypted email service after federal agents later demanded that he turn over his master encryption key, which he said would give agents access to every one of his customers' data.
"It's rather disturbing that the government is relying on the authority they obtained by railroading a small business in a secret court proceeding to justify demanding the key from Apple now," he said.
It seems to me like these guys who can write “jailbreak” code against the ios should be able to do this decrypt thing as well.
“The FBI could demand that Apple turns over its source code and private key to the iPhone’s operating system, the Justice Dept. implied”
LOL, sure they could. It only has a very conservative value or 150 billion dollars. What a joke. This will never happen.
“Right or wrong......The party is over for Apple. They are Obama voters and now Obama’s FBI is going to ream them out.”
A lot of Apple users are not Obama voters. And the FBI will lose this one. Tiny one man band Lavabit email is a very different animal than Apple who is not the email service.
They cannot prevail against apple unless they basically make encryption fully illegal.
This is total police state crap and Apple is fighting the good fight here.
Stay strong, Apple.
“I think if i were Apple.....I would smile back at the FBI and hint that I’m just about ready to move the company to Switzerland....taking every single developer along with me.”
Imagine the countries on earth that would love to have Apple move in. And all for the condition that they not demand things like this. Then move and enjoy the political fireworks when Iphones are suddenly apologetically withdrawn from the US Market because of the American security state.
Sorry FBI, but even with Apple’s source code and the ability to update an iPhone’s firmware to remove the “ten try limit” and “progressive software delay” and allow automated guessing, which is what they seek, you are still out of luck if a long password, say 10 alpha numeric characters, were used. Since Apple does not store the password on the device, but rather stores a one-way hash of the password plus a device ID, the ONLY way to crack the phone is to guess the password and match the hashed value. With a hardware-constrained 80 millisecond hashing time, the raw guessing time, assuming upper/lower/numeric/symbols used is * 63,201 million centuries * for the 60,510,648,114,517,017,120 possible combinations
you’d have to change the software ahead of time and compromise the phone beforehand and trap the password at point of user input . . . but, but, but, there is NO USER to input it on these sized phones!
So I guess you’d have to compromise EVERYONE’S phone in case one of them is a bad guy
The and developer should have been moved by now. I support Apple if they do that
The government has you working early this morning. No, it does not defeat the 4th amendment in any way whatsoever. You still working on your earlier mentioned “unbreakable encryption” that only the government can access?
We should get you on cold fusion.
But seriously, the US government is the most pervasive and intrusive government on earth when it comes to gathering the personal information of it’s citizenry. Every 14 seconds it gathers the data equal to the entire library of Congress. Every 2 days it gathers more data than the East German Stasi did in its entire 40 year existence.
And they still claim they need more to protect us.
Its bullcrap and everyone knows it. You cannot crack down on Americans to protect us, telling us how dangerous the world is, while simultaneously bringing in a few million of the very people who endanger us.
I have a question ..????
If Apple does have to give up that key info .. will it affect every phone, only iPhone, or will it also include all android phones.
The reason I’m asking is that I’m considering upgrading to a Samsung6S - which I believe is an android phone .. and I want to know ahead of time if that phone will be affected.
If you don’t know the answer, please don’t plague me with stuff .. I’m not a techie, I just want a better phone than the one I have, and Metro PCS is offering a free phone.
I know the Samsung7S just came out; but I’m not a person who requires the latest phone. To me, function is more important than having “the latest”.
I now believe that the government already has access to the phones and the suit is a spoofing job to create the illusion that they can’t access the phones. They want to publicly lose the fight to ensure that current and potential targets believe that their phones are secure.
“FBI could demand Apple source code and keys if iPhone backdoor too ‘burdensome’”
And if they refuse, then I suppose the FBI COULD blowup Apple’s world headquarters. Why not? The U.S. Constitution apparently isn’t worth the paper it’s written on anymore.
I was not referring to users of Apple products, I only meant the Apple Corporation
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Eminent Domain requires that the government seizing the asset must pay the fair market price for the seized asset. To assess the fair market value of an income producing asset, one does an amortization of it return over several years and comes up with a multiple year value for the asset. . . iOS has generated a couple hundred BILLION DOLLARS over the past year alone.
I doubt the US government could afford to buy iOS's source code in an eminent domain order.
Reardon metal...
That's a whole order of magnitude easier. . . and it isn't easy.
That was my first off the cuff thinking. . . now, after having thought about it more, my estimate is more like $450 billion. . . You have to go with what kind of revenue does it throw off over multiple years.
NIST specifies and DHS approves FIPS 140-2 products. Luckily some are made 100% in America. Think about it carefully before suggesting we turn over that technological advantage to some other country.
Ordering Lavabit to take the minimal action of placing a pen register, an existing technology, on a single account is trivial compared what the FBI is demanding Apple to do, create a non-existing technology which will compromise their entire business. Pen Registers are something companies are already capable of doing in the ordinary course of doing business on metered accounts for their own purposes. Doing something a company already has the capability of doing cannot be considered an undue burden as ruled by the US Supreme Court in the New York Telephone case which also was all about placing pen registers.
That's exactly it. Until they are willing to slam the door on Muslim immigration/entry and immediately arrest Huma and her cabal of Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators, any talk of data-gathering needs is total nonsense.
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