The US vs Apple

we cant break shit. apple security is no joke. our govt is inept at almost everything. this is like saying les miles really knows offense but is holding out his secret playbook.

Apple Faces U.S. Demand to Unlock 9 More iPhones

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is demanding Apple’s help in unlocking at least nine iPhones nationwide in addition to the phone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif., attackers.

The disclosure appears to buttress the company’s concerns that the dispute could pose a threat to encryption safeguards that goes well beyond the single California case.

Apple is fighting the government’s demands in at least seven of the other nine cases, Marc J. Zwillinger, a lawyer for the company, said in a letter unsealed in federal court on Tuesday.

“Apple has not agreed to perform any services on the devices,” Mr. Zwillinger wrote. Starting in December, the letter says, Apple has in a number of cases objected to the Justice Department’s efforts to force its cooperation through a 1789 statute known as the All Writs Act, which says courts can require actions to comply with their orders.

In the San Bernardino case, prosecutors have cast their demands for Apple to help them unlock the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook — one of the attackers in the December rampage, in which 14 people were killed — as a limited effort in response to an unusual situation.

Since challenging a judge’s demand in the San Bernardino case, which called for Apple to create a special tool to help investigators more easily crack the phone’s passcode, the company has repeatedly asserted that such a move could not be done in isolation.

“Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices,” Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said in a letter to customers. And in a note on its website on Monday, Apple said law enforcement agencies nationwide “have hundreds of iPhones they want Apple to unlock if the F.B.I. wins this case.”

Apple has long maintained that it would hand over data to comply with a court order when it was technically able to do so. In a report covering the first six months of 2015, Apple said it had received nearly 11,000 requests from government agencies worldwide for information on roughly 60,000 devices, and it provided some data in roughly 7,100 instances.

The judge has indicated skepticism over the government’s demands. Initially, Apple agreed to a formal order to help the Justice Department gain access to Mr. Feng’s phone, but Judge Orenstein balked, questioning whether the All Writs Act could be used that way. He invited Apple’s lawyers to raise objections.

While his ultimate decision will not be legally binding in California, it could influence the legal arguments there. And an appeal by either side has the potential to work its way through the federal court system to become significant case law.

Law enforcement officials around the country are anxiously watching the cases in both Brooklyn and California to see how their own investigations might be affected.

At a news conference last week after the debate erupted in California, the New York City police commissioner, William J. Bratton, and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said they had collected about 175 iPhones, in investigations, that they have been unable to unlock.

Mr. Vance rejected the notion that Apple should be forced to cooperate only in certain prominent crimes.

“What we discover is that investigation into one crime often leads into criminal activity in another, sometimes much more serious than what we were originally looking at,” he said.

 

Just another example of:

Private Sector > Gov't at everything.



Just noticed your Trump signature.....so true.

 

Weed > Chemo. Makes cancer sit around and play video games and not get out of bed for a very long time.

 

The government is asking Apple to write software that would enable the FBI to get into the phone. They're not asking Apple to hack into the phone and hand over the data. They're not asking Apple to provide them with the data from this specific phone. They're asking Apple to create software that is basically a backdoor into iphones for the FBI. There are at least 15 other iphones in this legal request. The government legally requiring a company to write software that gives them access to electronic devices is a slippery slope with too much potential for abuse. Where does it stop once this precedent has been established? We already know the government has been collecting data on US citizens in secret, so let's not behave as if our government would never take advantage of the abuses this change would allow.

How any reasonable person can be okay with this just blows my mind.

Apple is going to use the precedent of another court ruling that classified code as "free speech" which is protected by the 1st Amendment.

 

In this case the iPhone user is dead. The phone is owned by the agency he worked for so if the agency gives permission to unlock the phone there should be no dispute.

 

Was not aware that this was his employers phone, in that case your correct, the issue should simply be for the agency he worked for to give permission. Issue solved

 

That has been done. I think I'm switching to the apple side. Nothing actionable on it by now anyway.

 

I don't think you have to be firmly on one side or the other. There is middle ground as you pointed out before. I believe Apple should not be compelled to open the dort to all phones but should be able to be compelled tp open one under search warrant, that is no different than the traditional telephone companies.

 

I understand that not everyone is as tech savvy as some of us, but this is unbelievably naive. The government has invested billions dedicated to acquiring and storing data collected without a warrant or with a rubber-stamped warrant from a FISA court. There is even evidence that the FBI illegally hacked into servers to find information that led them to Ross Ulbricht.