Given what I saw when I was at DO, everyone should back apple in their refusal to unlock the iPhone.
We then want Apple to improve their security so that no such request by governments would be possible in future. Tighten the security so that not even a special custom version of iOS would make a difference to the self destruct measures in place. Then we wouldn't need to waste any time arguing about it.
Just to be clear, I'm against mandated backdoors in products. I should be allowed to make my product as secure as I want to, even against myself. Yes, that might hinder government search and seizure, but that's the government's problem, not mine. I agree with Apple and most other tech companies on this.
But Apple isn't being asked to create a backdoor. The door already exists, and was voluntarily created by Apple. Apple has all of the tools and knowledge in its possession to walk through it. Whether that's the PIN itself (it's not), or the code-signing key and source code needed to disable attack mitigations (without which a 4-digit PIN is worthless), doesn't make a difference. As you observe, they could design the phone such that this attack is not possible. They did not, even though they've been claiming otherwise for years now.
All of the arguments in favor of Apple boil down to a general opposition to government search and seizure, worries about damage to Apple's reputation, a claim that code-signing occupies a privileged legal position (akin to attorney-client privilege), or a slippery-slope argument that the government will ask for mandated backdoors on all iPhones next. None of these has a chance in court. I'm more and more convinced that Apple is well aware of how legally wrong it is, and is just doing this to save face over erroneously advertising that their phones were secure even against Apple itself (and therefore any government coercion of Apple).
If someone is going to challenge me on this, please answer this two-part question: If Apple had the phone's PIN stored in their database, do you think the government should be able to compel them to hand it over? And why is that any different?
It's not completely unprecedented to require active assistance from a third-party. There's a Supreme Court case about this very issue, United States vs New York Telephone Co. The FBI wanted New York Telephone to install monitoring hardware on their premises and assist the government in its operation. The district court issued an order to that effect. The company offered to instead give the FBI only information, which the FBI could then use to install and maintain the system themselves. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the FBI.
The main criteria that people have read out of that case is "unreasonable burden". I don't think that the FBI's request to Apple is an "unreasonable burden", especially since the government will pay for any costs. The biggest burden will be on Apple's reputation, but that is self-inflicted from making claims (honestly or not) that ultimately weren't true. I can't imagine the court allowing Apple to keep its technical assistance from the government.
> If Apple had the phone's PIN stored in their database, do you think the government should be able to compel them to hand it over? And why is that any different?
Well, I think, they should not, but I don't claim its different.
Apple wants to have it both ways, build it so that they have full control and they can be compelled by nobody to give up that control. I would rather they build a system, where nobody is in control at all.
This is also the idea behind TPM chips which are in almost every phone/laptop these days, so consumers couldn't tamper with DRM and other similar crypto systems.
I find it ironic that this argument in support of TPM, etc. is being made for phones (not necessarily by you), but this same site has vigorously opposed it for PCs, especially Linux.
You can also seal against some other value. So you'd have seal(plaintext, pin) and unseal(secret, pin). Unseal only returns the plaintext if the PIN is the same that was used to seal.
This is where it gets really fancy. The TPM has a bunch of built-in registers called PCRs (Platform Configuration Registers). You set a PCR by calling extend(newmeasurement). At boot, the firmware hashes the bootloader and sticks the hash in the first PCR by calling extend(hash). Then the bootloader measures the next boot component (probably a second stage bootloader, or perhaps the BIOS settings), and stores that hash in a PCR, and so forth. The resulting value of each PCR is based on both the measurement passed to extend() and the previous measurements, so the whole chain is verified. The cool thing is that seal() and unseal() can use these PCRs the the same way as, and in addition to, a PIN. Now your disk will only be decrypted if you boot the OS that you used to encrypt it. If you're willing to trust the firmware and OS makers, you don't even need a PIN anymore. The OS's built-in authentication could be enough.
Windows PCs tend to have TPMs, but iOS devices have their own hardware encryption solution.
I've glossed over and simplified away important details, but that's the gist of it.
Apple can either create a special update key for the TrustedZone and distribute it to User (SmartCard in the package you buy the phone in) or they could just put in a non-upgradable system.
Both would work.
All I can say is that they genuinely do their best to protect you. For me it's that they have to spent a lot of resource (fiscal and other) to protect you from what is in my opinion: really sketchy shameful shit on the US and many other government's part.
If people want to really know why tech companies are at the point of enough is enough, it's because many governments continually try to twist laws/regulations/random stuff/whatever they want/made up shit in an attempt to get what they want. Eventually becomes boring, annoying and very expensive telling them they're wrong.
Since you're quite obviously having to dance around how to communicate the fact that you've received NSLs and invocations of CALEA that made you feel queasy (I feel your pain for similar, vague, hypothetical reasons), perjury isn't the legal concept that you're after there. You want 18 USC 2709, and for those keeping score at home, to my knowledge nobody has been prosecuted for violating (C)(1) which would test that law on appeal. The Internet Archive famously challenged the nondisclosure itself and won, which is a bit different.
I honestly don't know with what they'd charge you. Obstruction, maybe, but there's enough national security buzzwords in the (again, I've heard) letters and law to give me pause on considering civil disobedience there. The law does say in 18 USC 3511 that they can invoke a district court to force compliance, and then contempt can follow. But unclear on the nondisclosure part in the absence of a court order, and that's scary.
(BTW, IANAL, just an ex-hoster with a penchant for policy, and I'd love to hear someone like rayiner's view on this.)
To others: Don't go into hosting, particularly the abuse side, if you value your sanity and a positive outlook on humanity in general.
The essence of "All Writs" is (actual quote) "all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law."
which if I understand means in simpler English "we can officially request anything from everybody when we do our job, unless it appears as too illegal."
I've had minor problems with Dreamhost, but nothing major yet.
On top of that, our server in Portland STILL isn't ready, and we don't have an eta on when it will be. There's been a couple of other little things too - basically it feels like a major problem with the server every other day, clients are mad, and we feel out of our depth.
Anyway, I leave work at 5pm but my boss doesn't and I don't want him to die of a heart attack. So. Digital Ocean is being investigated.
I currently use OVH for dedicated servers. Low prices (starting at $70/mo), unlimited bandwidth use (most other hosts charge for bandwidth above a certain amount), DDoS protection as a standard feature (most hosts just threaten to kick you out when you get DDoSed or make you pay $15,000/mo for DDoS protection), and they've only been down once in the past few years I've used them:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494475
(And they automatically refunded me for that incident; didn't even make me open a support ticket or anything!)
I don't want to sound like a shill but I (and others I know) tried a few hosts before settling on OVH and OVH has just been so much better in every way than any other host I've tried...
On the other hand, if you're looking for a really cheap dedicated server, Oplink has a $35/mo dedicated server: https://www.oplink.net/dedicated.html
I used to use Oplink and still like them, but they were one of those hosts that kicked me off for getting DDoSed (related: if you run a popular game, expect to get DDoSed).
Did you get any information about what the deal is with Dreamhost? I want to give them the benefit of doubt because they have been great for a couple years - their live chat is especially useful for me, and their backend is easy to work with. But this move to Portland that they have going on seems to be an absolute shitshow, and I wish we could get a proper explanation for what is going on over there.
There are parts I like and parts I dislike about the Dreamhost backend. The email stuff is really clunky. The other stuff isn't great, either, tbh. I like how easy it is to upgrade to PHP 7, though...
Incidentally, I think I was using around 20 TB of bandwidth a month when Dreamhost "subtly" started hinting that I should move on from their $8/mo shared hosting.