Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Police are unlikely to win wider access to smartphones despite FBI success in San Bernardino case

I'm not sure people understand that Iphones no longer have ANY security at all worldwide. Yes. The debate between Apple and the government is over(for now) but everyone is pretending everything is okay so people still buy Iphones even though the security on Iphones is blown worldwide because of what the U.S. Government has done. So, one of the outcomes might be the end of Apple as a  smartphone maker as well as Samsung as a smartphone maker and the end of all other smartphone makers worldwide. So, even though the government and Apple are pretending the problem is over. The problem is not over for 700 million Iphone owners worldwide, it's just beginning. Apple wants you to still buy Iphones and so does the government and both of them don't want you to know the security on your Iphone is zero now worldwide. So, it looks like neither Apple or the governments of the world are going to tell you this for 1000 different reasons. How strange is this? It just means they really don't care what happens to you worldwide I guess. They don't appear to care what happens to you financially or on any other level in regard to your personal Iphones or business Iphones.

However, the most likely outcome if I was running Apple or Samsung would be to get to work on whole new Smartphones and encryption operating systems while still realizing that governments will have to break these new systems eventually. There might even be a way to encrypt present Iphones on earth (all 700 million of them) so the government cannot break into them for a few weeks or months at a time. This is pretty crazy however,  any way you look at it.

Also, this whole article is retarded because it really doesn't matter whether police get this access or not because you have to know criminals worldwide and other governments will have it so you have no security on your Iphone at this point.

So, why would it even matter whether the police have access to this information or not? So, articles like this pander to the ignorance of the general public regarding encryption worldwide.




 

Police are unlikely to win wider access to smartphones despite FBI success in San Bernardino case

Los Angeles Times - ‎30 minutes ago‎
The successful hack of a phone linked to the San Bernardino terror attacks is unlikely to help police win greater access to encrypted data contained inside thousands of smartphones sitting in evidence lockers nationwide, legal experts and law ...
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Police are unlikely to win wider access to smartphones despite FBI success in San Bernardino case

The successful hack of a phone linked to the San Bernardino terror attacks is unlikely to help police win greater access to encrypted data contained inside thousands of smartphones sitting in evidence lockers nationwide, legal experts and law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
The process used to gain access to Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone 5c might not work on other devices, according to an FBI official with knowledge of the investigation.
Though the FBI might want to use the new tool to help solve outstanding criminal cases, doing so would also make the process subject to discovery during criminal trials and place the information in the public domain, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Full coverage: Apple's fight with the FBI >>
Any application of the method used to access Farook's phone would probably be limited to investigations that are unlikely to result in criminal cases, the official said.
"A technical option developed for a particular computing device may not work on other devices," the FBI official said. "The effectiveness of these lawful methods may be limited by time and resources, and may lack the scalability to be a viable option for most investigations."
News that the FBI found a way into Farook's phone Monday drew excited reactions from police, who have long complained that encrypted data represents a major roadblock to routine police investigations. Thousands of smartphones sit in police evidence lockers across the country. At least 400 locked devices are in the possession of the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.
“From all the chiefs that I’ve talked to, we’re hopeful this will give us some insight into how we’re going to be able to get into some of the phones sitting in all of our evidence rooms,” said Terry Cunningham, police chief in Wellesley, Mass., and president of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police. "We’re clearly anxious to learn what they did and how they did it and if it can be replicated.”
Federal investigators have said little about how they gained access to Farook's phone. The iPhone 5c was at the center of a looming court battle between the FBI and Apple, which rose out of a court order demanding that Apple create software that would allow the FBI to access encrypted data on the device.
Farook disabled the phone's iCloud backup feature six weeks before the Dec. 2 attack, according to court filings. He had also enabled an auto-erase feature that would permanently destroy all data on the phone after 10 consecutive failed attempts to enter the device's password.
A third party provided the FBI with a way to disable the password entry limit, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. The official also requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
Despite the success involving Farook's phone, it is unlikely that the process could be replicated on other devices, the official said.
Internal government policy might also limit what, if anything, the FBI could share about the method used to crack Farook's phone, according to Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.
If the government exploited a flaw in Apple's security measures, it could be required to disclose that information to Apple under the "Vulnerabilities Equities Process," Crocker said. The policy is weighted toward disclosure, but the government has successfully fought to keep such details private before.
Government agencies are allowed to share information about digital security flaws with one another, he said. But if the government chose not to share that information with Apple, it could also conceivably be barred from telling police agencies about the process used to unlock Farook's phone.
“They certainly can share it within the federal government without disclosing it to Apple," Crocker said. "The way I read the policy, sharing it with local police would be a dissemination outside the government.”
Though the debate over Farook's phone did not land in criminal court, the fight between law enforcement and Silicon Valley over access to encrypted data is far from over. Though the FBI may have claimed a victory this week, some police leaders fear it won't take long for Apple or another company to build tougher encryption methods.
“If the FBI did in fact find some type of a flaw that they were able to exploit, clearly the industry is going to say 'We’ve got to find a way to plug that hole,'" Cunningham said.
Follow @lacrimes and @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in Southern California.
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