"How about we start with FBI mandated remote control gun disablers given that it's guns that killed these people? Oh, you're concerned that someone will figure out how to bypass it, and it won't just be the FBI disabling your gun?
Congratulations. You now understand my position."
Why don't we have remote kill switches in cars? Think of the high-speed chases that could be prevented.
Why don't we have surveillance cameras in private homes? Think of all the crimes that could be solved.
Even if these are all off by default, and the law requires a court order to turn them on, Americans would not accept them. Encryption is no different, except that most Americans don't understand it well enough to see the parallels.
But these are just arguments against backdoors.
The even more fundamental argument is about the All Writs Act. Can the FBI require companies to develop new capabilities just with a court order? Shouldn't that require legislation? Why did we bother to pass CALEA, if the government could have just said "All Writs Act" and gotten what they wanted that way?
"Apple ordered by Chinese government to disable lock on phone seized from undercover CIA agent."
The act is the same. Being a multinational company, the result is no different for Apple. A government is legally requiring Apple to make decryption possible, but suddenly the people crying for Apple to unlock this phone will take an extremely different stance.
This type of reasoning leads to cognitive dissonance (believing two logically conflicting things at the same time) in the general population, which is caused by people applying double bind[1] arguments to conversations. Those double bind arguments end up creating additional cognitive dissonance in others and the vicious cycle is repeated, all the while being accelerated by our ever increasing connectedness. There's a going theory that these types of meme-based arguments are actually thought viruses[2].
One way to stop these types of arguments is to take a quiet moment and identify arguments or language structure that lean on speculative unknowns and which encourage equally speculative rhetoric which is dissonant in nature. In other words, let's all start to learn how to identify dissonant speech and reject it as a truth when we hear it. Let's tell others we think the conversation may be dissonant in nature to help stop the cycle.
One thing to consider while approaching solving these complex problems is setting the goal of removing rules of conduct as technology becomes more complicated. All this talk of creating new rules (and seeking new rulings to establish them) is creating an extremely complicated house of cards for all of us to thoughtfully manage. This is because we're basing our arguments on a fundamentally false premise, which is it's the government's job is to completely remove all suffering from society. That's actually not their job, nor is it achievable, so perhaps it's time to question why they think it is and figure out a solution that isn't in disagreement with itself.
I'm not attempting a rational argument. I am attempting to phrase the argument in terms that a set of authoritarian advocating individuals can relate to.
To most of them, their guns are more important than preventing terrorists from killing people. By driving home the fact that this precedent will eventually apply to their guns, you get their attention.
Otherwise, they just fluff it off as a "whining from a bunch of liberal, elite pansies".
> Otherwise, they just fluff it off as a "whining from a bunch of liberal, elite pansies".
You can't simulate what you might say and then simulate what they might say and make any of it make any sense (or be reasonably efficient in whatever systems you plug that stupid logic into).
Stop the cycle and solve the real problem. That's all I'm asking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
Otherwise, you just fluff it off as "whining from a bunch of conservative, mouth-breathing gun nuts."
Basically, not only do I not trust the government but I don't trust that the information won't fall into even worse hands than theirs.
A gun won't stop a government from watching your every move by converting every device in your house into a surveillance device and then using "parallel construction" to persecute you if some political apparatchik doesn't like your views or opinions. A gun also won't stop a criminal from emptying your bank account or stealing your identity, attacks that can today steal far more from you than a home invasion. A gun won't stop a stalker from hacking your home devices to secretly record your kids playing, or hacking your e-mail account to spy on you, etc. Encryption on the other hand can stop all these things. Cyber-attacks today are potentially even more damaging than non-violent physical invasion (burglary, etc.).
Not only that, but we are very close (if not already there) to a world where you can kill someone by hacking a device. Self-driving cars, Internet connected buildings, etc., could all be used to conduct a homicide remotely. If, for example, the signing key to a car's firmware were to be leaked, then hackers could remotely flash a person's car to murder them on the highway and make it look like a hardware failure or a freak accident. A government could even do this and have almost no chance of detection. The opportunity for corruption both public and private is fairly large given how clandestinely these kinds of attacks could be conducted.
Crypto is the new "well armed militia" and the new right to personal self-defense.
Crypto is just another weapon in the arsenal.
It's more like "the manufacturer of this safe has the ability to reprogram the safe to make it crackable, we should hand them the safe and demand that they reprogram it so we can access it".
There's no such thing as one-off and then it disappears in the world of software. Once it exists in the world it's only a matter of time before everyone has it.
I already wrote a rebuttal of this argument in a different subthread. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11134257
If you have something to add to that, respond there.
China could steal Apple's key, but it doesn't immediately get them anything. They would also have to build up a completely parallel OS. That would be really expensive.
However, once Apple builds the malicious software, NOW you now have two very clear, very desirable targets.
Do you really think that China, Russia, etc. wouldn't bribe, steal, threaten, kidnap or blackmail their way to getting a copy of those?
The same applies to the source code and key now.
The actual software can be locked to the specific phone, so having it wouldn't help. Only having the source code would help, but having the source of iOS would also be very easy to turn into a backdoored version for anyone with the resources to steal it.
Do you not think China etc are capable of modifying source code?
Edit: sure, modifying source code to change the phone ID is a bit simpler than changing source code to not erase the phone on an incorrect password. But the difference seems orders of magnitude smaller than the "getting source code and Apple private keys" difficulty level.
And while it's certainly possible that someone could figure out what Apple's signing keys are, it's incredibly unlikely given how big the numbers we're dealing with are. Which means, sure, somebody else could modify the source code, but getting it on to devices is an entirely different question.
Based on what I've read of what you've written, it seems like you genuinely believe that software is some magic cure-all that can do anything and everything you want, regardless of the practicality and effort required, and actual known constraints.
They take the udid of the phone, and refuse to run if it doesn't match the udid of the iPhone 5C in question. This was specifically mentioned in the court order.
>And while it's certainly possible that someone could figure out what Apple's signing keys are, it's incredibly unlikely given how big the numbers we're dealing with are. Which means, sure, somebody else could modify the source code, but getting it on to devices is an entirely different question.
You seem to have misunderstood. The threat model is not someone figuring out the key, the threat model is someone stealing the key. And, as I've been saying all along, the attacker needs to steal the key regardless of whether Apple complies with the court order or not. Modifying the source is not enough.
>Based on what I've read of what you've written, it seems like you genuinely believe that software is some magic cure-all that can do anything and everything you want, regardless of the practicality and effort required, and actual known constraints.
I'm not sure what I've written that gives that impression. Which specific known constraint have I suggested software can get around? https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/17/apple-can-comply-wit... makes it sound that it would not be difficult for Apple to comply.
The fact that they would have to write some software or whatever is irrelevant. It's no different than if they already had a button they could press to make the phone hackable.
Having to write software is very different than using existing software. Apple developed their software precisely to prevent situations like this---the backdoor is _undoing_ those developments.
That it doesn't hurt another, do what thou wilt. Thus gay married farmers should be able to defend their marijuana crops with fully auto AK47s. Marijuana, guns and gay sex don't do bad things to society. Only people can misuse them.
I can't speak for the parent, but I'd imagine s/he has observed a correlation in that the political "right" seems to be more in favor of an encryption backdoor than the "left". The "right" is also unequivocally more enthusiastic in its defense of 2a rights.
To support this notion - at least insofar as being an indicator of public sentiment - I would point to the Republican primary field which has almost unanimously spoken out in opposition of Apple's decision. Their two Democrat counterparts have thus far been more reserved about the matter.
It is that follow on that is the back door. So now Apple is in the position where they have to unlock phones on demand, and not doing so will subject them to fines and imprisonment (you cannot easily appeal an order to do something in a case which it is clear you have the capability to do).
What is worse, if they are forced to comply and develop this capability, and then design the next generation of phone so that they once again don't have a capability to break into it, that case then is even harder. The FBI can sue Apple for intentionally obstructing justice.
Don't be fooled, this isn't a case about one phone and one set of people who have shot a bunch innocent people. This is very much a calculated strategy on the Justice Department's behalf to get back doors into phones and create legal precedents for which they can compel those back doors.
That will force the group that doesn't want back doors to get Congress to create a law that specfically forbids them. And the Justice Dept knows that would be very hard for folks to achieve.
The answer now is no. Companies must provide access to information if they possess it, but that's not the same as writing new software to enable access to information they don't possess.
Once that Rubicon has been crossed, it is unclear what the legal test would be to limit the work that can be requested. If a court can require Apple to write some piece of software, why couldn't it require Apple to write some other piece of software? Or take any other affirmative action that might assist the FBI?
I know this might sound crazy but this is how common law works. Court decisions create precedents, which are often in the form of heuristics for constraining future decisions.
A very famous example is the Supreme Court precedent on abortion: before a fetus is viable, the government does not have a legal basis for considering it to have independent rights. Whether or not one agrees with it, the rule is clear.
Right now the rule is clear for what companies must do under court order. If the FBI succeeds in applying the All Writs Act in this case, that clear rule will be gone. What will take its place?
Edit to add a concrete example:
Apple announces that iOS 10 cannot be broken even by Apple. The FBI goes to court and says that they are tracking known terrorists who are using iPhones. If those terrorists get iOS 10 as announced, the FBI will be impeded. So Apple must alter iOS 10 to ensure that they can deliver retroactive access to phone contents in some way.
This would be the smartphone equivalent to CALEA, which requires network operators to build their networks in a way that permits wiretapping. The big difference is that CALEA was passed by Congress, whereas the FBI would only need a court order for smartphones!
The current request is for Apple to build a special version of their OS which can be loaded onto the suspect's phone. It seems to me that the precent this would create would be for similar actions: providing custom software. The gulf between that and altering the public builds of iOS is vast, and I don't see how the former precent could possibly lead to the latter. In fact, the order in question explicitly states that the software provided by Apple must be tied to the specific iPhone the FBI wants to crack.
The precent of providing custom software for a specific device could very well be dangerous in and of itself. This comment does a good job of discussing the possibilities there:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11120036
In short, the precent set here could very well lead to requiring Apple to turn on suspects' microphones remotely, or loading software that scrapes data as the user uses it. That could certainly be bad. But it's a huge leap from that to somehow preventing Apple from ever building and selling secure systems.
Edit: thinking about this a bit more, here's what I see as the really simple version of it all. The FBI's order is compelling Apple to build something, and the worry is that it sets a precedent for building more. But forcing Apple to build insecure devices in the future is not the same; that would be preventing Apple from building secure software and hardware, not compelling them to build something insecure.
Basically, the FBI can argue that Apple did this before and must keep doing it in the future. Making the device such that they cannot respond to a request could be viewed as going against the court. "I'd love to give you that document again, but now I burn them all so you cannot have them."
Once we permit the FBI to task private companies via court order, there's no way to predict how far that tasking will be permitted to go.
> If the FBI demands that you open a door for them, does that imply you're not allowed to brick up the entrance later on?
The FBI is not demanding that Apple open a door, it is demanding that Apple build a custom software system for them. If the FBI can tell Apple how to build software today, then the FBI can probably tell Apple how to build software tomorrow.
If they do this today, they can probably do it tomorrow, yes. But "this" doesn't mean compromising all iPhone hardware or software. It means building a special copy of the software to attack already insecure hardware and software.
Let's say Apple makes the iPhone 7 completely invulnerable to attack even from Apple. How does this precedent play out? The FBI goes to Apple and says, "Do that thing you did before." Apple replies, "Sorry, but we literally can't do it for this phone." How does the existing precedent cause a problem?
This whole line of argument feels too much like, "The FBI can demand something, this is something, therefore the FBI can demand this." People keep saying there's a connection and I just don't see it. When I ask what it is, people just reiterate that it's there.
Then they request a warrant that requires future iOS versions to permit similar access.
By what argument would Apple fight that warrant? The previous case would have already established that such access is necessary, that Apple can provide it, and that the court has the legal power to force them to.
In terms of the burden on Apple, the staff time burden to write software that will run on 50 million iPhones is no greater than software that will run on one iPhone. Code is code.
In terms of damage to the Apple brand, the FBI has already argued that that should not matter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/business/justice-departmen...
"By what argument would Apple fight that warrant?"
By what argument can Apple use to fight this current demand? They clearly can break into the phone.
Consider more traditional warrants. The police ask for a warrant to search your house. They get that warrant. Then afterwards they ask for another warrant, this time to enter everybody's house. Does the precedent set by the first warrant make a judge likely to grant the second one? I don't think so. Certainly I've never heard of any such warrant being issued by an American court (excluding the ridiculous FISA court, anyway), even though police would surely love to have one, and the precedent of search warrants for individual houses is extremely long standing.
The FBI can (and does) hire locksmiths and safe crackers to get into safes where they believe there is valuable information inside, but they don't compel the manufacturer of the safe to create a capability of bypassing its safeguards, but if they did criminals would seek it out so they could rob those safes, and customers would stop buying that safe because they knew criminals could probably get their hands on the same tools the government could to break into and defeat its countermeasures.
So having the government able to order a safe maker to build a safe that can be broken into, the safe maker loses customers and business because their customers don't want a safe that can be broken into, they want one that protects their valuables from everyone.
Many people equate this to demanding that Apple create a security vulnerability, and I don't get it. The vulnerability is already there. The iPhone 5c is already insecure against an attack by Apple. The government is just ordering Apple to exploit that existing insecurity.
There are compelling problems with that too, but it's not the same as requiring Apple to build something insecure.
If the safe company simply hadn't built in that capability, there would be nothing the FBI could demand of them, because it wouldn't be possible.
Remember the attorney general who molded the torture stance for the bush admin? John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalas? We need to be able to make these people accountable and be removed when they do stuff like this.
Those both are basically war criminals.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if a company has to comply when the FBI demands information for a person. But if they do, this shouldn't be seen as any different.