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Viruses aren’t biological, they don’t just live dormant inside a phone. They have to be used, activated or deployed. Zdziarski says he thinks the District Attorney is trying to claim that the shooter was trying to compromise the local San Bernardino IT network with a virus of some kind, but the language used in the filing is just factually incorrect and likely misleading to the court. There is also seemingly no other evidence that would lead investigator’s to believe such a claim.If a serious computer virus did exist on the device with the phone acting as a host of some kind, then the device would have to...

iPhone prices overseas tanking in response to Justice Department ignoring the free speech clause in the Constitution and insisting Apple write code for them to unlock iPhones.

It all began with a car crash. I was doing some ironing when my mum came in to tell me that a family friend had been killed in a road accident in Thailand. My phone was on the worktop behind me. But the next time I used the search engine on it, up popped the name of our friend, and the words, "Motorbike accident, Thailand" and the year in the suggested text below the search box.

The head of the F.B.I. acknowledged on Tuesday that his agency lost a chance to capture data from the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers when it ordered that his password to the online storage service iCloud be reset shortly after the rampage. “There was a mistake made in the 24 hours after the attack,” James B. Comey Jr., the director of the F.B.I., told lawmakers at a hearing on the government’s attempt to force Apple to help “unlock” the iPhone. F.B.I. personnel apparently believed that by resetting the iCloud password, they could get access to information...

The U.S. government cannot force Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to unlock an iPhone in a New York drug case, a federal judge in Brooklyn said on Monday, a ruling that bolsters the company's arguments in its landmark legal showdown with the Justice Department over encryption and privacy. The government sought access to the phone in the Brooklyn case in October, months before a judge in California ordered Apple to take special measures to give the government access to the phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, attacks. U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn ruled that...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I've been listening to a number of people talk about the debate, this whole FBI versus Apple and iPhone thing, and Tim Cook granted a very lengthy interview with ABC's David Muir, and World News Tonight about this, trying to explain his position and the FBI is explaining theirs. And it's... Look, it's no different in this than any other thing that would come up, but it's fascinating, really, when in my case I am an expert on much of this. And to listen to people who don't know what they're talking about talk about it with...

The public argument between Apple and the FBI over cracking the encryption on an iPhone used by the San Bernardino Muslim terrorists is one of those ongoing civil liberties debates that negotiate the terms on which we are asked to sacrifice our civil liberties for the sake of Muslim immigration. We have already made a thousand accommodations and we will make a thousand more. There will be more databases, naked scanners, eavesdropping, vans that can see through walls, backdoors to every server, registrations, warrantless searches, interceptions and regulations. There will be heavily armed police on the streets. And then curfews...

Wired article LINK ONLY due to copyright restriction argues that the issue is not just about privacy versus safety and security. It makes the point that unlike what the FBI and DOJ are demanding, and the compromise their supporters are seeking, a back door into devices, that for the computer and mobile device security side to really work, it has to be absolute or it isn't security at all. The Apple-FBI Fight Isn't About Privacy vs. Security. Don't Be Misled (LINK ONLY Due to Copyright limitations)

Computer programming expert John McAfee has said the FBI would have to put a gun to the heads of all Apple programmers to get what they say they want, and that anyone who understands the issue stands with Apple, in an exclusive interview with RT. “There is no question that what the FBI has asked Apple to do is create a backdoor," McAfee said to RT America’s Ed Schultz. He disputed the bureau’s argument that only one phone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters would be affected.Video Interview with John McAfee A contender for the Libertarian...

What the FBI wants to do would make us less secure, even though it’s in the name of keeping us safe from harm. Powerful governments, democratic and totalitarian alike, want access to user data for both law enforcement and social control. We cannot build a backdoor that only works for a particular type of government, or only in the presence of a particular court order.” In the age of Obama and Hillary Clinton, that is a very serious concern. What the FBI wants to do would make us less secure, even though it’s in the name of keeping us safe...

Apple was hailed as a champion of digital privacy this week after refusing to help the FBI hack into an iPhone belonging to a suspect in the San Bernardino shooting. But the firm hasn't always been so scrupulous about user data, especially in China. The standoff between the FBI and Apple over the investigation into the San Bernardino shooting, which claimed the lives of 14 people in early December, has divided the United States. While some have argued that the company should, in this particular case, help investigators by bypassing the phone's security system, others have insisted that doing so...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: In the e-mail, "Rush, I'm already getting confused. Despite how much time you have spent and how clearly you've explained this Apple mess, could you make it even simpler for me to understand?" Sure. Here is the simplest way to understand this controversy with Apple, and the iPhone 5c that was possessed by the terrorist. Do you like the fact -- now that you've learned it -- that the government cannot crack your phone? Do you like that? How many of you up until now think that the government could have gotten into your phone, followed you...

The more highly technical the basis of a story, the more likely it is that some key detail will get jacked up by a journalist trying to translate it for the public. Call it Panzer's Law. It's only natural, especially when it comes to stories about security and privacy, like the FBI vs. Apple. There are a myriad of complex technical mechanics at play, fiercely difficult Gordian Knots of encryption and hardware solutions to unravel and a number of previous interactions between Apple and the government that have set one precedent or another. But no matter how hard it is,...

Apple is fighting the FBI over a court order requiring the tech giant to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone — but it appears the company had no problem breaking into at least 70 other protected smartphones. The October refusal bewildered New York prosecutors, who claimed the iPhone maker "complied" with at least 70 other requests to unlock suspects' phones, Motherboard reported at the time. Each request was made under the All Writs Act, a 1789 statute that grants federal courts broad power to issue "necessary or appropriate" writs. "(Apple) had an established procedure to routinely take any of these requests, comply...

Another successful Presidents Day caper. The entire mini-vacay in Aspen would have flown completely under the radar butt for the smarty-pants who got his panties in a bundle just because he was inconvenienced a little bit (several hours) waiting for Lady M’s plane to clear air space so the plebes could take off. And then some reporter at the Aspen Daily News had to blab the story from Aspen Police Chief Brian Olson about Lady M’s motorcade being allowed to “sneak through while they waited on tow trucks.” Do you see why she hates her FLOTUS gig? When Big Guy...

Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers. According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account. Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in...

A 2015 court case shows that the tech giant has been willing to play ball with the government before—and is only stopping now because it might ‘tarnish the Apple brand.’ Apple CEO Tim Cook declared on Wednesday that his company wouldn’t comply with a government search warrant to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, a significant escalation in a long-running debate between technology companies and the government over access to people’s electronically-stored private information. But in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted...

Last month, some of President Obama's top intelligence advisers met in Silicon Valley with Apple's chief, Timothy D. Cook, and other technology leaders in what seemed to be a public rapprochement in their long-running dispute over the encryption safeguards built into their devices. But behind the scenes, relations were tense, as lawyers for the Obama administration and Apple held closely guarded discussions for over two months about one particularly urgent case: The F.B.I. wanted Apple to help "unlock" an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December, but Apple was...

We see tremendous push from government for Apple to facilitate back door access to encryption on phones. This apparently to crack the terrorist's iPhone to find out who are their contacts, etc. This appears to be excuse to bypass privacy of phone users under the guise of security. Feds were ignorant to traffic around the terrorist's house. Now the phone is the key to find out who are their contacts? What does the phone reveal that records at the service provider, log of phone calls, doesn't? Where is the NSA and their records and alerts of possible terrorist activity? I...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — A digital prank making the rounds on Facebook has been ruining iPhones everywhere, and it now has Apple’s attention. The company has acknowledged that the prank is actually a bug that will prevent your phone from restarting. The message looks like an old Macintosh ad, and asks people to set their phone back to January 1, 1970 to experience a special feature that allows you to “relive the magic” of the past. Indeed, when the date is set back and you restart your phone, it will leave your phone stuck on the greeting screen. According to...