What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)

[solarz]

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

McAfee claims his organisation can break into the iPhone in 3 weeks.

Which pretty much confirms what I suspect - that its perfectly possible to break into iPhones, and that intelligence agencies probably developed the means to do so some time ago.

Which again, highlights the question of why the FBI is making such a horse and pony show out of this rather than just leave the phone alone in a room with some NSA/CIA people and come back to find it "magically" unlocked for them.

Which brings us back to my earlier suspicions.

I don't know, McAfee is not the most credible person.

I think this is most telling quote:

For instance, Mr Cluley cast doubts on Mr McAfee's idea that he could use "social engineering" to work out the pass-code of Farook's locked iPhone.

This is a process by which hackers try to find out login credentials by tricking people into giving them away.

"In a nutshell, dead men tell no tales," said Mr Cluley. "Good luck to Mr McAfee trying to socially engineer a corpse into revealing its pass-code."

 

[bluewater2012]

The more I read into this the more I find this is just another ploy by the government using the FBI to openly criticizes apple (protecting terrorists) to garner more public support to legalise back door hacking. Read it this morning and had taken an snapahot for references, source from BGR I believe.

 

[PanAsian]

Here's a NPR article about the law and tactics involved in the case and the potential repercussions:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Equation]

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

You guys should read the contents of this article to better understand the technical, legal, and ethical issues concerning the Apple vs. FBI debate.

Here's a comment by one of the blogger that is interesting:

The FBI is trying to get Apple to unlock their phone for fraudulent reasons. The San Bernardino terrorists were loners with no direct connection to ISIS - and they're dead. The government is just using the furor over that to try to set up a Prededent and get implementation, for snooping on all our phones - no questions asked. And of course the back door will be passed to our "allies," some of which, like the Saudis, are Really dubious - and it won't take long for the back door to go to hackers, either. It's the camel's nose in the tent.

It's pretty bad when the government attacks your freedom and a corporation protects it, but we live in an upside-down world.

To me this tells me that lone wolfer terrorists types are getting more and more sophisticated and the Homeland Security and FBI are having a hard time tracking them due to the legality of it all. In the mean time you have a large and popular corporation like Apple DID help the FBI in a case by case basis, but they don't want their good name to be tarnished by the government possible abuse and taking advantage of them. It's a catch 22 situation...sort of.

 

[Brumby]

Here's a comment by one of the blogger that is interesting:


To me this tells me that lone wolfer terrorists types are getting more and more sophisticated and the Homeland Security and FBI are having a hard time tracking them due to the legality of it all. In the mean time you have a large and popular corporation like Apple DID help the FBI in a case by case basis, but they don't want their good name to be tarnished by the government possible abuse and taking advantage of them. It's a catch 22 situation...sort of.

You rightly highlighted a fundamental issue in this is the potential for abuse by the government as opposed to individual privacy rights. Reading the Wired article, it looks like Apple has progressively shifted the security features to be customer centric and that technology favours the individual - ultimately. Eventually the populace has to decide to what extend they are prepared to forgo individual rights for the sake of security.

 

[no_name]

Do you have a link? That is the first instance I have heard of where it is confirmed that Apple can assess the data on locked iPhones and would be a significant admission with huge implications.

Maybe not possible for this particular phone. But they might want Apple to patch an OS update to make future Iphones have a backdoor that the FBI can bypass, for example.

 

[PanAsian]

Here's a comment by one of the blogger that is interesting:

To me this tells me that lone wolfer terrorists types are getting more and more sophisticated and the Homeland Security and FBI are having a hard time tracking them due to the legality of it all. In the mean time you have a large and popular corporation like Apple DID help the FBI in a case by case basis, but they don't want their good name to be tarnished by the government possible abuse and taking advantage of them. It's a catch 22 situation...sort of.

Another way to look at the situation is that through this action the FBI is forcing a reality check on Apple and the public which ultimately benefits the public.

By claiming that it cannot hack its own unhackable phones Apple essentially washes its hands of responsibility in knowing when its phones are hacked, the public is also lulled into using iPhones on the assumption that the devices are unhackable even if they are. The burden of knowing and proving an iPhone was hacked would be on the public which is least equipped to do that. This ignorance is bliss which actually puts more data at risk can last forever because unless undeniable evidence is provided by others to specifically pressure Apple, Apple can pretend that there is no problem or that there is nothing they can do about it.

If Apple builds a hack for its own phones then the public would not operate their iPhones assuming they are unhackable, Apple would be responsible for knowing when its phones are hacked, and the FBI would also get access to the data on an iPhone it should have access to. There is more due diligence for the public and Apple, which is the real reason why they don't want to deal with it.

There is at least a due process authorities are supposed to follow before using such hacks, so people are just using potential misbehavior by the authorities as a scapegoat for people putting their own ignorant pretense of privacy and Apple putting their marketing before risk of crimes and terrorism being easier to carry out.

 

[Jeff Head]

Guys, SD rules are not suspended on What the Heck Threads.

No direct real world war scenario discussions on SD.

DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS MODERATION

 

[Jeff Head]

In going back through and deleting political/ideological posts, and as a result of other member complaints, I deleted one by MwRYum.

MwRYum you are being seriously warned for that post. I am sorry I missed it when it happened, but it cannot stand on SD.

Good old days? Beating Americans? Parading them Half dead? Chinese green with envy?

Take your hate elsewhere. SD is not about those types of things and will not promote them or foster them here in the least...either anti-Chinese, anti-Russian, anti-American, etc.

Any more of these blatant posts will get you banned.

DO NOT REESPOND TO THIS MODERATION.

 

[MwRYum]

Here's a comment by one of the blogger that is interesting:


To me this tells me that lone wolfer terrorists types are getting more and more sophisticated and the Homeland Security and FBI are having a hard time tracking them due to the legality of it all. In the mean time you have a large and popular corporation like Apple DID help the FBI in a case by case basis, but they don't want their good name to be tarnished by the government possible abuse and taking advantage of them. It's a catch 22 situation...sort of.

Technically, the government could still "bend a few fingers" so to speak, in other ways to make Apple to play ball, as you should know, national interest and security concerns always trumps out in the end, even if it takes time to gain enough momentum.

And it'd all comes back to the necessity of surveillance, or the need to have superior decryption capabilities should if and when other corporations doesn't obey to the authorities.

But if it's merely a legal issue...well, this ain't the first time everyone finds ourselves in the grey zone, and won't be the last.