FBI to Apple: Decrypt this phone or else!

Good day all. I’ve been watching this story for the last week and I think I have enough information to make a few points. Long story short, The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants Apple to break their encryption protocols on the Iphone that one of the Islamic terrorists had from the San Bernardino attack.

There has been lot of back and forth over this during the weekend. Also, a bit more information has come out that really makes the FBI look utterly incompetent. Here’s what I know so far.

The Iphone was actually the property of the agency that the male Islamic Terrorist worked for. It wasn’t his personal phone. The personal phones and other electronic devices of the two terrorists were either erased or destroyed before they began their rampage. The FBI thinks that there is relevant data on that company phone.

Apple has, in the past and with older phones, been able to unlock them. However, Apple, at this time, has no means to break the encryption on this or newer phones. Also, newer phones have been purposely designed by Apple so that there is no way for them to break the encryption, even if they wanted to. The FBI has gone to court to force Apple to create a tool to crack the encryption. Apple has refused and is fighting the order.

Now for the incompetence part. As you may recall, the FBI let every Tom, Dick and Harry into the terrorists apartment. The claim they made was that they had recovered everything they considered important. Many law enforcement professionals, at all levels, questioned this decision by the FBI to release the apartment after two days.

We have since learned that the agency that owned the phone had not installed any sort of management applications, and that, on the request of the FBI, changed the password to the Apple Icloud account so the FBI could get into it. When Apple was approached to get into the phone, Apple suggested going to a known WiFi point, such as the terrorists home and let the Iphone back up to the Icloud.

Oops!

Thanks to the FBI not securing the premises, and changing the password on the Icloud account, that phone could no longer back up to the network. This led the FBI to go to court and get a judge to force Apple to break the encryption on the phone. And this is where things get a little tricky.

A number of people have equated the request as something similar to asking a safe company for help in cracking a safe they made. This is simply not the case. The actual tool needed to break into the phone doesn’t exist and Apple would be forced to create it, probably at their own expense. (Violation of the 13^th Amendment possibly?) Then there is the problem of what happens after the tool is created?

The Federal Government has demonstrated that it can’t be trusted not to abuse this tool to crack into anyone’s Iphone at will. There is also the other issue that this will show that the Iphone encryption can be cracked, rendering one of their sales features moot. Now the FBI is trying to shame Apple into caving in and not only cracking the phone, if possible, but also destroying one of their biggest moneymakers. Here’s what Fox News has to say:

FBI Director James Comey said late Sunday that the agency owed the victims of last December’s San Bernardino terror attack a “thorough and professional investigation” in an effort to explain why law enforcement officials are trying to compel Apple to help them gain access to a cellphone owned by one of the gunmen.

And if it hadn’t been for the stupefying incompetence of your agency, you probably wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Recall that the Department of Justice bent over backwards to deny that this was an Islamic Jihadi terrorist attack.

In a post on the Lawfare blog, Comey wrote that the FBI “can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead.”

The problem, and there are many with this demand, is that if allowed and Apple is forced to comply, (Provided they actually can comply), then this will be a backdoor used by the government to basically break encryption in the United States. If companies are forced to put some sort of a backdoor into their products, people will stop trusting them. Also, any site that uses encryption, especially financial systems, will see people stop using them.

Then there is the problem of hackers. Once it is known that a backdoor exists, they won’t stop until they find it. Apple, seeing this as well as the known abuse by the Federal Government of the Constitutional rights of Americans, posted an open letter on their company web site. Some of the key parts of the letter refer to why Apple won’t create a key to break into the phone.

When the FBI has requested data that’s in our possession, we have provided it. Apple complies with valid subpoenas and search warrants, as we have in the San Bernardino case. We have also made Apple engineers available to advise the FBI, and we’ve offered our best ideas on a number of investigative options at their disposal.

We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

And there you have it. Among the reasons Apple doesn’t want to try and break into the phone is that they are concerned that the tool will be abused by the government. The government denials regarding this possibility, thanks to Edward Snowden, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Read the letter in it’s entirety, and then follow the link to their Answers page to see a more detailed explanation.

This demand by the FBI has basically brought out into the open the fight the Tech sector has been having with the Federal Government. The various agencies, starting with the NSA, have hated any use of encryption by private citizens and corporations. It makes it hard for them to just steamroll their way into things and rummage through people’s information. This battle has been going on for decades, going back to at least the Phil Zimmerman/PGP battles in the late 20^th century. This case with Apple has brought the whole thing to a head.

Now the question is, what happens if the courts order Apple to, basically, destroy their business? Have no doubt, if Apple is forced to build a backdoor into their systems, the Apple Iphone is dead. We’re talking literally hundreds of billions of dollars on that part. Then we have the known antics of agencies like the NSA, which has been proven to slurp up everyone’s data in a clear violation of the 4^th Amendment.

We’re seeing prosecutors dropping cases because the technical tools they used, such as the Stingray system, and before that the Echelon system, to gather evidence to arrest people clearly violated their constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has ruled that your you can’t be forced to give up the password to your phone, but that hasn’t stopped law Enforcement agencies from braking into them anyway. (If you have a fingerprint reader and use that, you can be forced to provide the print to unlock it. Word to the wise, don’t use the reader)

It is very unlikely that the terrorists left anything on that phone. The very fact that the destroyed all their personal electronics makes me think that the only thing that terrorist used his phone for, was work related. I suspect the FBI knows this and is simply using this situation to force Apple, and later on other companies to build in the backdoors they’ve always wanted. Their claim that they just want to “Protect people” is laughable on its face.

You do not protect the American People by Spying on the American People. You protect the American People by spying on our enemies in other countries, like Iran. I suspect that no matter which way this goes, if Apple is ordered to build the tools, they might flat out refuse and tell the judges they will not comply.

This will start a major confrontation. You will have the Statists in Washington preparing legislation outlawing encryption. And you may end up with thousands of programers deciding that the time had come to completely crush the Government’s IT infrastructure.

You won’t have Russian script kiddies doing Denial of Service attacks. You won’t have foreign governments trying to break in to steal information. What you will have are some of the best programers in the world, who are really pissed off, going into the government systems and destroying them.

Consider this. The Social Security and Welfare checks don’t go out because all the records are gone. Payroll for all the non defense agencies, (Because you always want to make sure the soldiers are paid), deleted. In the case of the Department of Justice, you could even see the bank accounts of their employees raided and zeroed out. Credit histories ruined. Think Stuxnet on steroids multiplied by 10,000.

I’ve always thought that the next American Civil War would start when some agency attacked a group and ended up getting shot to pieces. I never considered that the first “Shots” as it were might be nonlethal yet far more devastating. As you have probably gathered, I’m backing Apple, a company that I despise, on this issue.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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