[Paladin2]

Apple lets them in the side door.

[Cowboy Bob]

Maybe denial IS a river in Egypt after all!

[Jonty30]

Of course they will deny it, but I have a hard time believing the NSA could so completely control their phone without some level of cooperation, at least from a former engineer of the Iphone software.

[ThunderSleeps]

Well Apple, you have two equally unpalatable choices here. Either you admit to helping the NSA, or you admit that hackers can install software and access your phone’s and users data without their consent. It isn’t that big of a deal Apple. We all sort of suspected one or both of these have been happening, not just to you though. I’m sure Android based phones are no better in this regard. Windows based phones are probably worse.

[GOPJ]

Unfortunately, the NSA has made it difficult or even impossible for companies to comment on precisely what the NSA requires of them. Clearly these gag orders makes backdoor denials at least somewhat suspicious.

Understatement of the year!

Hard to believe Apple's denial - - only a fool would trust NSA's willingness to tell the truth.

Birth pangs of a police state.

[Carry_Okie]

The NSA does not stop there. The Verge reports NSA intercepts laptops purchased online to install spy malware before routing to the customer.

I can't see how they could do this physically in time. My daughter just purchased a laptop and it only took two days to get here without special shipping. They would need whole factories dedicated to the purpose to handle the pipeline that fast unless they were already present in the assembly and testing process, which I doubt.

Now, I could see it if their hacks were already embedded in Windows, Linux, Mac OS, or even the ROM inside the processors, all of which would be a lot easier to do. In that case, nobody should be fingering Apple.

This is looking like it is going to be disastrous for American electronics manufacturing. Nobody wants a pre-hacked device.

[Bobalu]

The world needs a cheap, open source, open hardware smartphone. That baseband firmware is just the devils playground. It would be nice to have an encrypted local area walkie talkie function on an open source phone wouldn’t it!? For instance, you could communicate between phones in a mall without interfacing with the cell system at all. Kids could communicate with friends around their school in the same way.

Also, a cheap bluetooth unit that has encryption would be useful as an accessory for smart phones...it needs perfect-forward-secrecy enabled. They would still collect the meta data, but not the audio.

[clamper1797]

The “backdoor” is built into the in the hardware/firmware NOT the software .... Former iPod/iPhone chip designer.

[Organic Panic]

And the NSA denies it spies on US citizens. Nothing to worry about.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Apple is as Liberal as they get, and Liberals always say the opposite of what they mean.