The Law Is Clear: the FBI Cannot Make Apple Rewrite Its OS (backchannel.com) 367
An anonymous reader cites a post by Susan Crawford, Harvard Law Professor and former Obama Special Assistant: From her column at Backchannel, "Barack Obama has a fine legal mind. But he may not have been using it when he talked about encryption last week. [...] The problem for the president is that when it comes to the specific battle going on right now between Apple and the FBI, the law is clear: twenty years ago, Congress passed a statute, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that does not allow the government to tell manufacturers how to design or configure a phone or software used by that phone -- including security software used by that phone.
Good to hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this whole debate, is assuming making a system that is secure is beyond the means of mortal men. And will need a big organization to make such a system.
The truth is. If Apple are shown to be insecure, the bad guys will not use apple, they may make their own OS, which doesn't have the back doors. It may not be a fancy but secure for what is needed.
So Apple is loosing business, and the bad guys are still going under the radar.
Re:Good to hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
the bad guys will not use apple, they may make their own OS, which doesn't have the back doors.
This is true, or some version of it at any rate. Encryption isn't some Top Secret thing that only the government has. It's a mathematical fact, it's available to the general public in any number of different forms, and furthermore anyone with sufficient knowledge on the subject can write encryption software if need be. Screwing everyone else over on data security will not accomplish making anyone safer nor will it help catch criminals and foil terrorist plots. They'll just do an end-run around it. Or maybe they'll go back to using custom codebooks. Or any number of other long-standing methods of counter-surveillance. The entire premise that this is being demanded for 'national security' is so patina-thin, I can't believe anyone with an IQ even slightly above average would believe it anymore, given they've been following all this.
The FBI is being lazy at best, disingenuos and power-grabbing at worst.
President Obama is being improperly advised and/or technically ignorant at best, and being an enabler to the power-hungry and/or a power-grabber himself. Note that I voted for this man, twice! Wishing I'd not have done so now.
Apple needs to stand it's ground, and cetain people in the FBI need to stand down -- or perhaps be asked to resign.
Re:Good to hear. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a war on encryption right now, and frankly I don't think most politicians, and probably most of the senior folk at the FBI, even really know what it is. I'm sure in their view it's just some evil blackbox designed to keep them out, and all they need to do is bludgeon anyone implementing encryption systems with laws, the courts and a lot of bluster about how people like Apple are helping pedophiles, terrorists and organized crime.
Somewhere in the bowels of the various intelligence and security services there are people who are perfectly well aware that encryption is simply a mathematical discipline, that trying to outlaw types of encryption is the equivalent of trying to outlaw nuclear fusion or prime numbers, but what they're hoping is that a "compromise" will be made giving them back doors.
What worries me in the long run isn't the growing war between the technology giants and governments, but when they turn their attention to other projects like OpenSSL, OpenSSH, OpenVPN and other open source and freely available encryption systems. If the bad guys are as smart as they seem to assert (and there's no reason to think that at least some are), then they're just going to switch to roll your own solutions, use burner phones for any instant communication. Then are we going to see the project leads for these software packages being summoned to Congress or to Parliament, and basically accused of protecting bad people? Or will agencies like the FBI finally blink?
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If the bad guys are as smart as they seem to assert (and there's no reason to think that at least some are), then they're just going to switch to roll your own solutions, use burner phones for any instant communication
You did see where I said exactly that, right? Which is what I've said over and over and over again, which is what I sent to the Whitehouse itself, more than once (let 'em come and arrest me as a terrorist sympathizer, if they dare). I've more or less given up assuming politicians and other various people involved just don't understand what they're asking for, I'm really close to finally concluding that this is just power seeking more power. I just hope there are enough decent people in positions of power th
Re:Good to hear. (Score:4, Insightful)
President Obama is being improperly advised and/or technically ignorant at best, and being an enabler to the power-hungry and/or a power-grabber himself. Note that I voted for this man, twice! Wishing I'd not have done so now.
Apple needs to stand it's ground, and cetain people in the FBI need to stand down -- or perhaps be asked to resign.
"Barack Obama has a fine legal mind" (TFA) has never been true, or if it has, he certainly doesn't care much about legal issues that may stand in the way of what he wants to do.
For all the disappointments the Obama administration has brought, the most disappointing has been its lawlessness. Re-writing laws through the EPA, refusing to enforce others, using EOs as a fig leaf for outright lawbreaking, re-writing Obamacare on the fly as if there were no separation of powers at all...
This may be the first time we've had an administration that both sides of the aisle can't wait to see go.
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It's only going to get worse. I find this to be true with every subsequent administration. The last two clowns make me wish Slick Willie was back. All he wanted was some pussy occasionally. I didn't want President Obama and did not vote for him but when he won I kind of sighed and said, "Well at least he can't be any worse than the last fool." Wrong again.
Re:Good to hear. (Score:4, Interesting)
Party A: The Party B administration goes too far when doing X!
Party A (post-election): Our Party A administration is perfectly justified in doing X and Y!
Party B: The Party A administration goes too far when doing X and Y!
Party B (post-election): Our Party B administration is perfectly justified in doing X and Y and Z!
{repeat ad infinitum}
Re:Good to hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the disappointments the Obama administration has brought, the most disappointing has been its lawlessness.
Let's address this claim one point at a time.
Re-writing laws through the EPA,
The *laws* in question specifically delegate the creation of the regulations *to* the EPA. They are acting *fully* within the bounds of those laws when they create their regulations.
refusing to enforce others,
The Executive has *always* had discretion on how to allocate its resources for enforcement of the law. This is true at the federal, state, and local level, and always has been.
using EOs as a fig leaf for outright lawbreaking,
Executive Orders are legal. That is a long-established fact. They cannot change the law, nor have any of his EOs purported to do so. Additionally, he's used *fewer* EOs (per term) than any of his predecessors back as far as Grover Cleveland.
re-writing Obamacare on the fly as if there were no separation of powers at all...
There was no 're-writing' of Obama care. This is just a duplicate of the prior two, and equally empty. He has, as he is legally empowered to do, declined to enforce certain aspects of the law (pertaining to the timeline by which small businesses must comply with those certain aspects of the law), thereby preventing fines and penalties being levied on innocent actors simply because they were unable to adjust their business practices and software (at the mercy of third parties) to comply with a new law in the initial timeline. This is (again) a *COMMON* occurrence at the Federal, State, and local levels, because sane people don't want good actors penalized for things beyond their control, or for failing while acting in good faith.
Eleven Million (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. What exactly is your plan to deport them? To round them up? Where are you going to house and feed them while you do? Are you going to build some sort of colossal prison-city?
It's all very well to talk about deportation, but it's not a practical idea at this point, and to even attempt to do so would be both ruinously expensive and necessitate the vast expansion of police numbers and powers. We would destroy our society in this vain and foolhardy attempt.
For my part, I have been an illegal immigrant before, staying on a tourist visa in Central America for several years*. I would still be there today, building a better life for myself, if I could have managed it. I was far from the only gringo there trying to do so. I can say from personal experience that it takes an exceptional kind of person to pack up and leave their entire family and try to settle in a new country, and many American families are also proud to attest to this. As far as I can tell, there is no economic or social argument to be made against the free flow of labor other than simple racism. I see no reason why this latest group of immigrants should not be granted the same opportunities our ancestors were. I believe that it is a moral imperative to do so, as well as patriotic. And not to belabor the point, but there really isn't an alternative: a wall might keep some people out, but the immigrants in the country now are here to stay.
* My reasons were complicated and not worth getting into.
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President Obama is being improperly advised and/or technically ignorant at best, and being an enabler to the power-hungry and/or a power-grabber himself. Note that I voted for this man, twice! Wishing I'd not have done so now.
I voted for him twice, too. And I, too was extremely disheartened to hear that he weighed-in on the side of the FBI.
However, as far as Encryption goes, I would be very surprised if the President is any more informed than my dog, and is simply parroting the bullshit that is being fed him by the real criminals here: The "experts" in the FBI (you know, the same organization that didn't know not to reset the AppleID password) that are lying through their teeth, just to get an extremely dangerous precedent set
Re:Good to hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless Trump gets the candidacy. Then I have a moral dilemna on my hands: Vote for someone who has no chance of winning, as a protest, or vote for some Democrat, who has a chance of winning, so it's one more vote against Trump. Believe me I'm angry enough at all this for potentially putting me in this position. I want a clear conscience, one way or the other, but I'd just as soon not have to vote for someone who I don't like or believe in just to prevent someone I think is even worse from getting elected; I'm sick and tired of having to choose the 'least bad' instead of the 'best' because I don't have any other choices.
Don't bother trolling me about Trump, or Hillary, or any of the rest of them. I think they're all lying scumbags one way or another, I think none of them deserve to be POTUS, and I don't want to vote for any of them. I don't really want to vote for some 3rd-party (likely Libertarian) candidate either, but since there's no 'None of the Above' on our POTUS ballots, I can't use that as a form of protest either. Not voting at all is not an option, that makes me worse than people who vote blindly for whatever candidate their party trots out there (I'm not affiliated with any political party whatsoever).
Could we please have a President that doesn't suck ass? For once?
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Not voting at all is not an option,...
Glad to hear that. My feeling is that if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain.
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I have a pretty easy choice. I'm a Sanders supporter. If he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him. If Hillary gets the nomination, I'll vote for Jill Stein (third party candidate who matches my views closer than Hillary does). I live in New York and I can guarantee you that my state will go to the Democratic nominee no matter who that is (or who the GOP nominee is). My vote - be it for Dem, GOP, or third party - isn't really going to sway anything so it doesn't seem like a "waste" to me to vote third
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We need a non-partisan primary system
I agree wholeheartedly with that. No political party fully represents my beliefs and interests so why should I have to put up with a 'one size fits all' philosophy? I don't think I'm in as small as a minority as some might believe, either; I think many, like myself, have been voting for the 'least bad' for decades and are as tired of it as I am. Additionally I believe we need a 'None of the Above' on all ballots, and if that's what gets the most votes then you exclude all the candidates and start over with
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I can't believe anyone with an IQ even slightly above average would believe it anymore
IQ isn't really the right measure. Its a question of education. The average user does not know the fist thing about encryption. Beyond Caesar ciphers they have never had it explained to them. That is why SSL and pki are explained in terms of friendly little lock icons and colored address bars.
They don't understand the math, they don't know the difference between obfuscation and encryption. They don't get why if you give the FBI a backdoor someone else could also find it. They don't know the difference
Re:Good to hear. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, for all the people that wanted more government for the last 50 years, this is what more government looks like.
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Dream on (Score:2)
All it takes to make a civilization dumb is for the education system to keep people so busy with bullshit that there is no real time or merit to education and critical thinking.
When we look at all of the special students on College campuses protesting their own personal micro aggression and squashing any opposing speech we see that this is really not that difficult to do. Video games, Facebook, "Reality" TV, and Sports are more important than silly wastes of time like "Math".
The "Common Core" addition meth
Re:Dream on (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate this. Not least of which is the lack of scalability. If one's are dots, tens are boxes, and hundreds are cubes, what are thousands? Ten thousands? Millions? When an elementary school kid needs to draw a seven-dimension-hyper-cube to solve his homework, it's a sign that we've needlessly over-complicated things.
My third grader has nightly crying sessions over his math homework. He struggles with basic concepts like multiplication and division. My seventh grader, though, got his beginning math done before Common Core took over and loves math. My wife and I are very active opposing Common Core and high stakes testing. My kids opt out of all of the big standardized tests, Some may claim we're teaching them "if something's hard don't do it," but I say we're teaching them "if someone tells you to do X and you think the reasons for X are horribly wrong, then don't do X just because an authority told you to do so."
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I hate this. Not least of which is the lack of scalability. If one's are dots, tens are boxes, and hundreds are cubes, what are thousands? Ten thousands? Millions? When an elementary school kid needs to draw a seven-dimension-hyper-cube to solve his homework, it's a sign that we've needlessly over-complicated things.
Use straw-men much? I'm not going to argue for or against the "Common Core" (which isn't really what you think it means), but this is one the most ridiculous arguments I've heard against it.
I've personally seen 3 and 4 and 5 year olds in a Montessori school understand "place value" concepts much quicker and easier than most kids get them (1st or 2nd grade) through visual aids like strips and squares and cubes. Also, it leads to an intuitive understanding of, well... "squaring" and "cubing" numbers at an
what common core addition method? (Score:3)
Hello. I'm a math teacher, licensed to teach in two states, currently teaching algebra 2 and AP calculus. What are you talking about? I'm familiar with the common core state standards (CCSS). [corestandards.org] I've never heard of a "common core addition method." Care to enlighten me?
Please give a link to the online version of the CCSS that describes this algorithm. If, instead, you're seeing this algorithm described in some crap textbook your school district got from the lowest bidder, well, that's too bad. The publishers
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" If Apple are shown to be insecure,"
Very little is secure to the author of the firmware who is also the designer of the hardware if that firmware and hardware can be usurped by said author.
This argument is nothing to do with security or frankly , the "rights" of the public. This is a battle between on one hand a not altogether trustworthy government organisation that wants access to any data it desires and on the other a not altogether trustworthy global corp who is worried about the affect on its share pr
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"nd it might wind up that the backdoor for China might just be in US phones."
I'd be surprised if China hasn't put some backdoors in all the processors and DSPs it manufactures. I doubt many companies take a sample of what they ordered and put it in an electron microscope to check there's no extra circuitry on the die.
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AND the government is basically saying that it is requiring that all systems (including the ones used by it) are not secure. This, in particular, is odd. I remember when the news was that Pres. Obama could not use his phone of choice shortly after he was elected because it was not sufficiently secure. I've hear similar comments on Maricopa County, which declared that it would no longer use iPhones due to Apple's refusal to downgrade the security on Farook's device. The inevitable conclusion is that Mari
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Most Enterprise Management systems do not have that ability. Specifically with Apple devices, those security settings are such that the user is the defacto owner of the device. While it is possible to set these systems up so there is a back door way in, it requires a huge amount of IT involvement to do so, and IT resources are often very slim.
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And then the good guys will suffer when the bad guys find a way to exploit the back door themselves, just like the last time the FBI was granted a mandated back door into telecoms equipment.
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Losing business to whom?
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They did iot before when it was a different operating system that was encrypted in the same way. So has Apple done this before for an iPhone with the same version of iOS on it? The answer to that question is the relevant one.
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The thing is the FBI is asking for the first thing.
The smarter approach would be. Take the iPhone apart, take out the SDD, mount it in a standard computer, Copy the data, and have a NSA supercomputer decrypt the data.
I am sure Apple would be far more open towards helping people fix the problem that way. However what they want it a way to patch the OS so they can load an intact iPhone. and see what is in it.
Re:Still Unclear (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't been reading the news. The FBI says that it wants certain security measures removed from one particular phone. It wants Apple to write a modified version of iOS to be used only by the FBI in a secured environment to flash the iOS of this one phone, so the FBI can brute force the password (and use software to assist) without risking the encryption key being destroyed (there is a possibility that a feature on the phone is turned on that would disable unlocking of the phone altogether after 10 wrong guesses (though there are methods around this as well, but still it would be slow)).
That is what the DOJ said anyway. But then other district attorneys said that they are in the same situation with something like 112 other iPhones. They said this to support the DOJ's need for the modified software, but obviously it damaged the government's argument that this is a one time thing.
This is very different from Apple's earlier assistance to the government because this is the first time the DOJ has demanded that Apple actually create a modified, inherently less secure version of iOS. Apple would have to actually pay engineers to write code to create a version of iOS that must, must, must not ever be released to the public. It would have to be used only in a contained environment on Apple's campus not connected to the outside world--which Apple would have to build just for this purpose. Otherwise it would have to rely on the government to not accidentally release the modified iOS to bad actors.
The government is trying to use something called the "All Writs Act" to say that it can basically force anyone to do anything.
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Barack "Executive Order" Obama... (Score:2, Interesting)
...can do what ever the hell he pleases. It isn't the first time he basically said screw the laws and precedents and tried to ram rod his way down everyone's throats.
Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama... (Score:5, Insightful)
source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu... [ucsb.edu]
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Well, except that it's his DOJ that is fighting this, so it's not just with his blessing, but with his direct orders to fight this fight.
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Don't confuse the issue with facts.
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I know how much you ACs love to hate on the president, but at least get your facts straight. The last time a president had as few executive orders per year (over the term of his presidency) as Obama was when Grover Cleveland was president.
As the saying goes, it's not the quantity... it's the quality.
I don't recall Grover Cleveland (or any other president) telling the Justice department not to defend [cbsnews.com] a law(*). Or making an executive order that in effect makes up a new law [usnews.com] (and contravenes existing law).
How about his executive orders to kill an American citizen [wikipedia.org] without trial, or that citizens' teenage son (also an American citizen) two weeks later [wikipedia.org]?
But you're right - Obama is way better than other recent presidents because he doesn't issue *as
Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama... (Score:5, Informative)
...can do what ever the hell he pleases. It isn't the first time he basically said screw the laws and precedents and tried to ram rod his way down everyone's throats.
So is it Obama or EO's that you have a problem with? Because in recent history the high scores currently are [wikipedia.org]:
Ronnie 381
Bill 364
George W 291
Barack 224 (with 1 year to go)
George H 166
Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama... (Score:5, Funny)
Please take your so-called facts elsewhere. They have no place on a politics thread.
Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not jumping into the middle of this fight (I'm not educated enough on the subject) but I will say that there is nothing inherently wrong with an executive order. Many laws that congress writes delegate various powers to the executive--this is why we have a Code of Federal Regulations to go along with US code (USC enables the executive branch to do something, and the CFR is the details of that something... at least in theory). An executive order is a reasonable way for the President (the head of the executive branch) to direct HOW the executive branch does something. The problem arises when executive orders purport to enable or forbid something the executive branch has no power to enable or forbid.
Simply counting how many executive orders a president issues is meaningless in a vacuum. One has to actually ANALYZE those orders to determine if "screw the laws and precedents" is accurate with regard to a particular president.
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Simply counting how many executive orders a president issues is meaningless in a vacuum. One has to actually ANALYZE those orders to determine if "screw the laws and precedents" is accurate with regard to a particular president.
Yes I agree that context is important. Showing the number of EO's of the current president to be in same the ballpark as of all presidents in his era is also an element of context. Unless you want to take the position that a particular president is biased evil (or biased good), then all presidents will be making a mix of good and bad EO's (and that breakdown will also depend on the bias of the viewer given that EO's tend to be political in nature).
So I would argue that the relative number of EO's is a val
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In addition, I would posit that it is also impossible to classify EO's written in the current age into being good or bad
I'd love to see you defend that position. This guy definitely classified EOs [slashdot.org]. Why would you say it's impossible to do what he did? What sort of information do you think we'll get in the future that will make it easier?
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Sure, there's probably lots of big and important EOs, such as those protecting information or troops... but there's lesser ones that give everyone 4 hours off too.
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That would be mean something if all executive orders were exactly the same. Your argument is like saying someone that's had 10 jay walking tickets is worse than someone who's robbed 3 banks.
So go on then .. let's see a break down of EO's then. Because until you show some facts you are just blowing smoke out of your arse.
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Yep. It's even in the comments of TFA is a way that they can - state of emergency orders. The ones from Jimmy Carter & Iranian hostages are still in effect, so this is definitely not out of the realm of possibilities.
Barack Obama often acts like a leader... (Score:2)
Reality: Barack Obama often acts like a leader while saying or doing nonsense. One example: The ACA, "Affordable Care Act" gives money to the medical companies and takes it from citizens. Those who profit from people being sick got everything they wanted.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_executive_orders
Considering he has faced an obstructionist Republican party for his entire term he's actually doing better than most of our recent President's.
Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House, 1/4/07 - 1/3/11) and Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader, 1/4/07 - 1/3/15) just shed a tear over your ignorance about their reign - as Democrats - over Congress. Let's not forget the first couple of years that President Obama had a filibuster-proof majority in Congress...
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Considering he has faced an obstructionist Republican party for his entire term he's actually doing better than most of our recent President's.
Yea, sure, don't let facts get in the way of your blind partisan hand waving.
You don't understand, this is terrorism.../s (Score:3, Insightful)
The USA is in perpetual war and illegal acts are justified by the wartime status, terrorism, the children, etc.
They'll just retract it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:They'll just retract it (Score:4, Informative)
While I am concerned about this possibility as well, there is some evidence it may not happen. The FBI director certainly didn't get the warm, supportive welcome he expected when he went in front of Congress after this mess started. In fact, CALEA got thrown right in his face.
These are good points, but (Score:5, Insightful)
When has this, or the previous, administration really cared about what the law says when the law disagrees with what the administration wants to accomplish?
Re:These are good points, but (Score:4, Insightful)
And I am not sure what evidence anyone has for his "fine legal mind". As far as I can tell, he lies, threatens and bullies people to get his way, daring people to oppose him, then claiming all sorts of persecution. He has repeatedly referred to use of violence ("if they bring a knife, you bring a gun", "get in their face") . He has publicly lamented that there is a constitution that seems to limit his powers.
The man is an *activist*, period, He says or does whatever he wants to get his way, legal or otherwise. And the vast majority of the press goes along with it, and doesn't call him on it, because they want the same thing.
Make no mistake, in his mind, "the end justifies the means". In this case it's particularly disingenuous, because he doesn't care one whit about solving this case or stopping further terrorism by the usual suspects. He's using this case to bully a company into giving him unfettered surveillance for *everyone*, terrorist threat or not.
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Well, Susan Crawford is a Harvard Law Professor, and former Obama Special Assistant, so she both knows the law, and Obama. I would count that as evidence in favour of the proposition. All this is right up there in the summary, by the way.
Meanwhile you're some random dude on Slashdot with a clear and very specific ax to grind against Obama. So really you're only questioning this because you wanted to make a completely unrelated point. In fact Obama can both have a fine legal mind and be the "activist" yo
One other thing is clear: (Score:2)
--------
I long to live in a country where I don't have to put those words in quotes.
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The government doesn't care about following the law when it comes to "national security."
Good to see that you don't believe that this is about national security. Now just to convince those who blindly follow Trump and Hillary.
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A loophole may be invented (Score:2)
How sweet! (Score:2)
Horsemen of the Infopocalypse (Score:2)
When the government asks me "But what if terrorists kill you!!1!"
Then I'll reply "at least I died on my feet instead of dying on my knees, which I probably would anyway because you have a shitty track record"
Law was clear that Americans shouldn't be spied on (Score:2)
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Really Ms. Crawford? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Barack Obama has a fine legal mind."
To be blunt, this is unsubstantiated. For someone who has as many degrees and has held as many academic positions as Obama has, his scholarly writings are strangely absent.
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his scholarly writings are strangely absent.
Scholarly writings? Since when a scholarly writings required to compete an undergrad education degree and a JD (plain old law school)?
The legal world is full of very fine legal minds that don't have any "scholarly writings" to their name.
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I'm curious as to the academic positions you speak of his holding.
Ninth Amendment (Score:5, Informative)
The default status is that the people have the right to do, or not to do, anything. The government has no rights, except as stated in the Constitution.
Therefore, passing a law preventing the government from doing something is oxymoronic. The government cannot force Apple to do anything - no legislation required. Any attempt to compel Apple must pass constitutional muster.
I get annoyed when the media reports something like "a law to legalize marijuana", or "a law to legalize abortion", or " a law to legalize gun ownership." The correct framing is "a law prohibiting...has been repealed/found unconstitutional."
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That tired old document? No one pays any attention to that thing.
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Your complaint is that the media does not use convoluted language? That's not something that someone that isn't stupid would say.
Relevant? (Score:2)
Is this even relevant when the DOJ is threatening to just seize the code and signing keys? At this point, Apple is no longer being required to write code.
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As Apple said in it is brief:
"The government also implicitly threatens that if Apple does not acquiesce, the government will seek to compel Apple to turn over its source code and private ... The catastrophic security implications of that threat only highlight the government’s fundamental misunderstanding or reckless
electronic signature.
disregard of the technology at issue and the security risks implicated by its suggestion."
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As Apple said in it is brief:
"The government also implicitly threatens that if Apple does not acquiesce, the government will seek to compel Apple to turn over its source code and private ... The catastrophic security implications of that threat only highlight the government’s fundamental misunderstanding or reckless
electronic signature.
disregard of the technology at issue and the security risks implicated by its suggestion."
Again I ask, is this 'settled law' that says Apple cannot be compelled to do what's requested relevant? Apple is stuck between a rock and a hard place, now. This revelation is pretty much useless. The alternative is what we need something against.. being compelled to turn over code and keys. Settled or not, Apple is being told, 'do what we want, or we'll make you give up your stuff so we can do it.'
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CALEA bites the DoJ in the ass! EPIC! (Score:2)
I love it! CALEA...the law that basically mandates that Carnivore be built-in to our telecommunications infrastructure, and which has probably made the warrantless wiretapping/metadata collection by the NSA far more technically simple to accomplish, is what ends up backfiring on the FBI. Priceless.
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I love it! CALEA...the law that basically mandates that Carnivore be built-in to our telecommunications infrastructure, and which has probably made the warrantless wiretapping/metadata collection by the NSA far more technically simple to accomplish, is what ends up backfiring on the FBI. Priceless.
Exactly. The irony is unending with this one. Who would have ever thought it would have been this that would have stopped them.
Minor changes are not rewrites (Score:2)
Context (Score:2)
The article quotes the following
But in exchange, in Section 1002 of that act, the Feds gave up authority to “require any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features or system configurations” from any phone manufacturer.
It misses the preceding clause;
This subchapter does not authorize any law enforcement agency or officer
Notice that it "does not authorize" rather than "prohibits" and it only applies to law enforcement agencies or officers. There is nothing in it that prohibits another agency like the the Office of the President, as it is not a law enforcement agency from requiring it.
Also, the term "specific design" is questionable. A specific design would be something like "must use SHA2". It could easily be argued that "access to encrypted data" is not a "spe
Rewrite? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because if you haven't been following the case, the phone attempt settings can't be changed without the user's passcode. The FBI doesn't have the passcode. What they want to do is trick the phone into accepting iOS FBI edition as a new iOS update where the phone settings are bypassed. In your example, as an admin or root, you can change the setting because you have permission to do so. The phone is not on a MDM so Farook was the administrator.
Specifically the FBI is asking 3 things:
Apple is ahead of the legal curve here (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure this won't get much visibility, but for what it's worth...
Apple has smart lawyers, which made it odd for me to read when they were basing their primary objection on first amendment grounds, rather than the more obvious undue burden defense (and/or reference to this law, and the lack of statute which would compel them to rewrite the OS). But more recently, the government made their real strategy more clear (ie: rewrite it, or give us the code), which made Apple's strategy make more sense. Although the government cannot necessarily compel Apple to rewrite the OS code, they have much better legal footing to compel Apple to give them the OS code, and presumably could write GovOS themselves fairly trivially.
That's where the freedom of speech argument comes in: although the government can, in effect, steal Apple's code (legally), it's much more clearly established that they cannot compel Apple to "say" that it's coming from Apple (in technical terms, sign the code). Without the code signature, GovOS cannot be pushed onto, or run on, iOS devices. In essence, Apple was countering the more legally persuasive argument that the DOJ was holding back as their would-be trump card, if Apple fought the initial ruling. Well played, indeed.
For the sake of everyone in the US (and not to mention all the principles the country is founded on), I sincerely hope Apple prevails. Their forethought in legal argument gives me some hope that all is not lost, privacy-wise.
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But they are a "manufacturer of telecommunications equipment" aren't they?
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LOLWUT? There is no such thing as "pick and choose". The law is explicit:
https://www.law.cornell [cornell.edu]
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Correct - they can't tell Apple how to design the equipment. However, there is a section that demands specific features that the device must offer.
"by requiring [that equipment manufacturers]...design and modify their equipment...[to] have the necessary surveillance capabilities"
Law enforcement can't tell them How to do it, only What they must provide.
I ain't about to read the whole thing - but from the paragraphs I have read one might argue that Apple was supposed to provide this functionality in some wa
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Maybe.
They could have a reasonable argument to be a de-facto communications carrier due to iMessage. Whether that would be sufficient protection is another question - I don't know the law, so perhaps you have to be registered under some category for the protection to kick in.
AC's position is unclear (Score:2)
More Calea info. CALEA applies to manufacturers of equipment. However, it's unclear to me if handset manufacturers are considered telecom equipment manufacturers or not. Also, if Apple claims CALEA I would assume they they would already be abiding by the provisions in CALEA.
What the FBI is asking for, though, goes way beyond CALEA, in that they're trying to compel Apple to do a specific action that goes beyond wiretapping and communications intercepts.
http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/CA... [wikia.com]
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OK. I too was confused by the applicability of CALEA here.
I mean, I can understand the SPIRIT of the article. I can understand the way CALEA works and how boundaries are defined.
But it does seem to apply much more to telephony infratructure manufacturers and telephony service providers.
Nontheless, the article states that the FBI has specifically pointed to CALEA to create the claim that once they get a warrant they can compel.
So, it seems based on that alone that we can continue to debate what CALEA does
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Actually, with facetime & imessage, they are a communications carrier.
Re:She is so smart (Score:5, Informative)
You packed a lot of wrong into such a small post.
Unfortunately Apple isn't a 'communications carrier'.
The CALEA subchapter in question [cornell.edu] that prohibits the feds from mandating a particular design explicitly mentions manufacturers (quoting the relevant bit: "This subchapter does not authorize any law enforcement agency [...] to require any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features, or system configurations to be adopted by [...] any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment [...]"), which would refer to Apple in this case, since cell phones are considered telecommunications devices. Neither the summary nor the article mention anything about CALEA being limited to just carriers, nor is that the case, since it applies to manufacturers, support service providers, and communications service providers, among others, so I have no clue where you got the incorrect notion that it only applied to carriers.
If this was a viable out then Apple would have used it. It isn't.
You are talking out of your ass, since this is exactly the line of argumentation Apple has been using in its briefs for the last several weeks. Here's Apple's latest brief [documentcloud.org], where they explicitly mention CALEA and its relevance to applying the All Writs Act. Where do you think this law professor got the idea? It's been the core of Apple's argument ever since their initial appeal of the order in February, since it undermines the very foundation on which the FBI is basing its demand. There have been multiple discussions here at Slashdot over this exact topic in the last few weeks alone. Apple has been arguing that the All Writs Act, which the FBI is using in order to conscript Apple's assistance, is inapplicable in situations where Congress has passed laws that provide more specificity. 200 years of legal precedent agree with that understanding. And, contrary to your assertions, CALEA clearly provides a higher degree of specificity that's directly applicable in this case, since it explicitly states that law enforcement cannot make these sorts of demands of manufacturers.
How your comment got +5 Insightful when it is such utter and complete rubbish is beyond me.
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Apple has been arguing that the All Writs Act, which the FBI is using in order to conscript Apple's assistance, is inapplicable in situations where Congress has passed laws that provide more specificity. 200 years of legal precedent agree with that understanding. And, contrary to your assertions, CALEA clearly provides a higher degree of specificity that's directly applicable in this case, since it explicitly states that law enforcement cannot make these sorts of demands of manufacturers.
Well in this case I think Apple's logic is a little weak. The law says CALEA doesn't require it. It doesn't explicitly prohibit some other law from requiring it. Say you run a restaurant and you're up to all health codes. That doesn't protect you from a negligent manslaughter charge under the penal code if one of your customers die from food poisoning. Or it turns out that one of your exotic dishes was an endangered species under the Lacey act. The general rule is that you must obey all the laws, simultaneo
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Agreed, two laws can cover the same topic, but that's not what's going on here. In fact, the All Writs Act itself says that writs issued under it must be "agreeable to the usages and principles of law", i.e. that it cannot be used in contradiction to other laws on the books. More or less, the All Writs Act itself was designed such that it could never override a more specific law created to address a topic. It's only ever applicable if nothing else is applicable. In this case, something else is applicable, s
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iMessage and FaceTime are communications, which are central to the use of an iPhone. Which part of those falls outside of communications? What else would you categorize the daily 50 billion or more of communications messages and voice/video calls they handle annually?
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Yep, they don't give a shit about the law. That is the biggest problem with all the law enforcement agencies in this country right now.
I love how just this morning I heard on the radio that the DOJ is saying that Apple is not above the law. [abajournal.com] To anyone who looks at the situation and the law critically it is quite clear that the DOJ believes themselves to be above the law.
This is why I keep proposing that we need to bring back the guillotine for government employees or congress people that break the constituti
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Have you heard of something called The Supreme Court? It is supposed to prevent the abuses you decry. It has in the past stopped the US government from doing things. Merely because you don't think they do it often enough is not evidence that there is no check.
As for the idea that government is a monopoly, you are obviously wrong. There are other countries, and you are personally free to move to ANY of them. Go check out Sudan, there is practically no government there.
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So no updates under any circumstances? Sounds less than secure.
-Marcus
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For the good of our adults, we must keep the protections on our cell phones strong so identity thieves can't easily access the personal financial information on our phones (see Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal, credit card information potentially stored by the various App stores?)
I c