Re: Ideals in crypto: Apple must help Feds unlock San Bernardino killer's iPhone – judge

[Shelley]

On February 17, 2016 5:40:57 AM Georgi Guninski <guninski at guninski.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 04:30:29AM -0800, Shelley wrote:
> > Tim Cook vociferously objects:
> >
> > http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
> >
>
> Lol, the cynic in me suspects this is just PR on part of apple and
> propaganda for 'merrycunts on part of the feds.
>

'merrycunts made me laugh out loud (probably because I'm a quart low on 
caffeine!)

I'd never underestimate the efforts of the propaganda machine here; It's 
entirely possible this is a bunch of obfuscational BS.

As I understand it, crApple already gave the feds access to everything else 
associated with that phone (icloud account, etc) including forensic 
guidance.  Maybe these people were astute enough to figure out how to keep 
local data from being sent to the cloud (if the feds noticed something that 
should have been backed up is conspicuously missing, such as contacts etc)?

Also, if the feds truly couldn't crack something I highly doubt they'd make 
an appeal that wasn't under seal.  Way to tip off the ter'rists as to which 
hardware to buy, right?  Doesn't really make sense.

> btw, have there been similar requests to windoze and android vendors?
> (i don't remember such).
>

Windoze is itself a virus and full of back doors all on its own, so I don't 
think they need to ask :p  I know some versions of Android used to be able 
to be remotely unlocked (not just wiped), but I think that vuln has been 
closed.  I'm not sure if similar legal requests/demands have been made of 
M$FT and Google, I'll look into it.

> Are turrists smart enough to know the above spy them at least as the
> fruit?

Apple routinely perpetrates invasive monitoring of its lusers.  Their 
crapware is closed source and they design their hardware to be impossibly 
difficult to service or modify for the end user.  For the life of me, I 
cannot see the appeal of any aspect of that company or of their products.

-S