Hacker News Reader

Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Ok someone murders a bunch of defenseless people... Why is Apple dragging their feet? This is tasteless. I'm NOT for backdoors, but this is ridiculous.

View on HN

> I'm NOT for backdoors

I think you've just learned that you are, in fact, for backdoors. A backdoor doesn't become any less of a backdoor when it's only used against bad people.

No, don't put words into my mouth. I think Apple should go to some extraordinary means to assist here. Any system is hackable if have physical possession and control over the input.

Do you know what a HSM is?

It's true that we haven't seen perfection yet, but there are tamper-resistant devices where the above is not trivially true. If each device were protecting the same keys or we just needed to break the platform, I might be more inclined to agree, but given that they have individual keys and a failed break could leave the data unobtainable, I'm not so confident.

That said, I think this particular phone doesn't have the secure enclave, so it may be breakable here.

It's more than just that. It's about setting a precedent. If you let the government walk all over your security, then where do you draw the line? What's the point of security at that point? Security doesn't favor good or bad.

Great point about good/bad, so here's the line: systems should resist and prevent mass warrantless surveillance. We are innocent by default, a government should not be able to dragnet it's citizens.

However I don't understand why everyone on hn thinks it's impossible to design things in this manner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com