On Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 7:37:57 AM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 3/29/2016 4:10 AM, Doug Miller wrote:
Micky wrote in
:

No, they didn't ask for that. In fact, though the FBI had the phone,
they were willing to give it to Apple to let them work on it and not
tell anyone else what they did.

.... thereby breaking the chain of custody, and rendering any information retrieved by Apple
completely useless for any criminal prosecution -- so says an attorney I heard discussing the
case on the radio a couple of weeks ago.

The feds will argue that they aren't looking for evidence, just "tips".

[Of course, any of those other court cases still pending now can probably
be challenged by defense attorneys: "My client claims the 'evidence'
The State has introduced has been tampered with. We demand to know *HOW*
that evidence was obtained. We've retained a crew of former Apple
employees to examine, carefully, the State's claims as to how they
extracted it from this device..."]

Apple was asked to WRITE SOFTWARE, cryptographically *sign* that software
and then introduce it to the phone (via the normal update mechanism).

Completely wrong. Read the actual court order. It says nothing
at all about that. It simply asked Apple to:

1 - Disable the 10 strike erase feature

2 - Give them a means to electronically present passcodes via, USB, wifi,
etc.




The feds spelled out EXACTLY what the differences between that software and
the "normal" software would be. I.e., it didn't include anything that
would make a casual user of an "updated" phone realize that it had been
hacked.

BS. Read the court order.


The changes would only be noticed by a person wanting to
circumvent the protections on the phone:
"Gee, I wonder if my phone has been hacked? How can I test this
theory? Ah! I can deliberately enter a bad passcode 11 times and
see if I end up BRICKING my phone (in which case, it has NOT been
hacked). If it still works after that 11th attempt, I'll know
the phone has been hacked!"
D'uh...


BS. Read the court order.


The feds lost this -- and probably KNEW they would lose in the courts.

Sure, that's why they went to court, right?


Now that the feds have an "alternative remedy", they can't argue that they
should be able to compel Apple to "write software" -- even resorting to
200 year old laws! And, Apple can spin this as "why should we be compelled
to 'speak' (the act of writing software is a form of speech) what YOU want
us to speak"?


The remaining step is for whoever helped the FBI or some other hacker
to put the method on the web. See how Apple likes that.



But, this tool will only help them with phones of which they can gain
physical custody. So, they're stuck in perpetual "catch up" mode.

And, the bad guys now know that they should toss their phone into
a wood chipper before embarking on any evil deeds!

Apple, of course, now knows that they should ensure any future phones
have the protection mechanisms built into *hardware* -- so they can't
be tweeked (under court order) by rewriting the software.

Yes, the feds were stupid to let this boil over into the public...

It's not over. It's very likely another police agency with soon
resume, where this left off. This wasn't the only iphone.