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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

I feel like my positioned has changed a bit now that it is clearer the iPhone is owned by the same party that wants to recover the data?

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Who owns the phone is irrelevant in this case. Apple doesn't want to be forced to build operating systems into phones that break Apple's own security model.

This comment doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever, care to expand on what you meant?

I was originally wholly on the side of Apple since I place an exceedingly high value on privacy and against government intrusion. But now that I understand that the phone is the county's, it seems more like a case of a phone owner just wanting to recover their own data. Thanks for the downvote, though!

They were eventually able to get into the phone without the backdoor. The shooter's employer was able to change the iCloud password on it because they issued the phone in the first place.

The FBI initially wanted to get in by having Apple build a backdoor that could be used to defeat the security on ANY iPhone-- that's the bad thing, and it's still a bad thing.

And re: "thanks for the downvote"-- stop digging when you're in a hole.

Sure, as far as the FBI getting this being reasonable I don't think we need to go much further than the user being a butcher of humans. But there's no way for Apple to comply with this order without putting everyone else in danger either through the exploit leaking (and what an incentive to steal that exploit there would be!) or the legal precedent leading to our government (or others!) asking for more.

I think your being downvoted because the techies on hn are concerned with security, not ownership. Apple complying with the government makes everyone less secure. We aren't as worried about judicial over reach as we are with creating tools that will be used to commit crimes.

Good security will keep out anyone that does not know the secret. That includes "owners." The concept of ownership is irrelevant to the design of a secure system.

>I think your being downvoted because the techies on hn are concerned with security, not ownership.

I made this post last day [1]. It received 3 votes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149716

Please don't get discouraged. People might have misunderstood what you meant. There's also the problem with asking other people to spend their time and money on your request. If you want this to happen, you should provide a proof of concept and get people excited about buying it. If you develop a market, others will implement your solution.

Wanting to recover the data, I don't think anyone actually has a problem with - not even Apple, if I read the letter correctly. It's wanting to force Apple to create a tool we'd rather didn't exist.

If you or I asked Apple to recover data from our phones, they'd just act sympathetic until we went away. Perhaps walk you through some of the backup options.

That's an extenuating but, so far as I'm aware, both moot and nonessential criterion.

Virtually all the relevant phone data and metadata are available from other sources, including call, message, and email data, and backups until six weeks prior to the attacks.

Apple could have provided a data extraction on request, as it has done previously. This wasn't what the FBI had demanded.

Due to the FBI's own actions and direction, the data on the phone has quite probably already been destroyed.

Legally, my read is that the request has few or no merits.

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