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Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

If the government compels Apple to give FBI Apple's private keys, the spy state starts to officially exists.

Currently, the best practices assume that such "keys to the kingdom" are, for example by Apple, only in some hardware devices, guarded, needing presence of more than one person to be used and that every signature made with them is permanently considered and logged. Even if FBI protects the keys, their use of the things they sign with them won't be able to be followed: these would be just plain easily copyable programs.

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The spy state already officially exists.

This is just theatrics. This can all be done behind closed doors without public involvement. The terms of this debate were chosen by the executive branch to vilify companies and individual supporters of encryption.

What the government wants is to have this debate in the open and for a large enough portion of the public to accept the argument the government should be able to break into your phone with a warrant.

The "with a warrant" clause is good cop - bad cop. The FBI is making the high road argument that all this is legit and above board and to fight terrorism. On the other hand the NSA is doing the dirty work and then oh by the way now the data they have collected is available to the FBI... You know to fight terrorism.

Seems rather silly to bet on a horse against Apple. Though Americans are largely uneducated and uninformed about signing keys and public private key encryption, in fact good ol Trump said some reactionary ignorant stuff about boycotting Apple..I wouldnt put it past Apple to include a pamphlet or some type of effort to educate people about how important private keys are. Trump and the durr people are all about us vs terrorists and villify Apple but most of it stems from ignorance. If the government wants to bet on that horse I hope it drags them though the mud for a lap or two

> The spy state already officially exists. [...] This is just theatrics.

Indeed. It's more than likely that the FBI could just ask the NSA to break the phone, but if they do so then they have just admitted that the NSA can already do this and will have publicly exposed that capability.

If the FBI is smart then the plan is likely to fight Apple to the end, lose, and then have terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and members of the woodwind sections of orchestras move to the iPhone because "it's so secure the FBI can't get in!" all while letting the NSA break any iPhone they need and bootstrap the found evidence through parallel construction.

> The terms of this debate were chosen by the executive branch to vilify companies and individual supporters of encryption.

I, and Apple too, claim that the terms were chosen to establish a precedent that would enable FBI to next time request from Apple to change their products all without going through the process of creating new laws. Because the current laws don't allow that demand, to "make such software" or "change hardware that way." The FBI cites the "All Writs Act" as what gives them that right (their current demand is already "write new software with a hole"), and that act absolutely doesn't contain anything more than "the courts can issue writs." (!) It sounds like a comedy but it's serious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act

I think even if this were legally viable it would be an unmitigated economic disaster for the US tech industry.

I wonder, would it be possible for companies like Apple to completely up sticks and go somewhere else?

Where would it be ?

There is no place to go, we all must fight the trend.

I guess that if Apple moved abroad, the US would allow the importation of iPhones on its territory only if they can be breakable by the FBI. So either Apple exits the US market (not reasonable I think), or it has to fight the FBI, which it does now.

>no more iphones

Now if that isnt the easiest way to start a civil war, I dont know what is.

Apple should just fire the engines of their spacecraft headquarters and move into orbit. That should solve the problem of the FBI having authority to demand Apple's cooperation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

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