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Comment by tajen | Hacker News Reader

...or the FBI didn't succeed to hack the phone, and just tries to justifies why it won't proceed to trial.

By the way, since the FBI said this phone will allow arresting other terrorists... did we find anything relevant on the phone?

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More likely that they did manage to find a 3rd party that could unlock it and found nothing, this wasn't the suspects personal phone (those were also recovered) but it was his work phone, the 6 week old backups had no information on it, the attack was planned more than 6 weeks in advance and it is highly unlikely that he used his work phone to contact any one involved in this.

They've probably spent six to seven figures on hiring a 3rd party for a bespoke service just to find what any analyst could've assumed - nothing.

That said given the severity of the situation even a 1 in a 1000 chance to get some additional information would'be been worth the kings ransom they must have had to pay to get it unlocked. At the end think what you want of the FBI but that's exactly what their duty should entail, forcing Apple to unlock it is a murky business but investing resources in unlock the phone themselves is perfectly within their right and even obligation to do.

I don't understand why people are going apeshit about this no one would bat an eye when the FBI picks a lock or breaks into a safe how is an iPhone different?

> no one would bat an eye when the FBI picks a lock or breaks into a safe how is an iPhone different?

Because it was not about that one iPhone but the planned precedent with immense effects: using the court-order to "write" the new laws, and FBI started the whole thing exactly with that goal:

http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/26/fbi-apple-iphone-precedent-pol...

And? I've specifically stated that I don't think that the FBI demanding Apple to either unlock the phone or reduce the level of security is appropriate, the FBI breaking into it them selves is perfectly fine.

If you were a lock or safe maker, wouldn't you want to know how people were able to crack your product so you could improve it in the next version? Or would you just keep trying to sell a version of the thing that people buy to keep their stuff safe with a known exploit? Good luck.

I wouldn't consider lock makers as a good example on one hand they ask for feedback from locksmiths to improve their designs and on the other actually train licensed locksmiths how to break locks.

The vast majority of safes also have a backup lock or code.

Then why did you use locks and safes as an example in the first place?

Locks and safes are a good example for me, lock makers are a bad example for your argument because they do cooperate openly with law enforcement.

Gosh...

What lock do you have on your door? Something standard like this: http://goo.gl/cuIenh (Image of lock)? That can be opened easily in a number of seconds without damaging the lock with at least 2 well known techniques. Yet that is the lock installed on new doors on peoples homes. They don't care, people don't want/need actual security they just want to keep the idiot burglars out and be able to claim the value of their losses via insurance. While professionals will get in just fine via the front door without any trace of breaking and entering. And because the people don't care, the lock-makers don't care. The ones who care the most are the professional burglars who would like nothing more than for everyone to stay asleep and preferrably for the techniques to be forgotten.

In short; lock-makers continue to make exploitable locks just fine, because they sell just fine. The moment they stop selling is the moment they'll fix the issues. Nobody is going to skip the next iPhone because the FBI allegedly managed to crack one, security is not one of the features people care about (in general).

The whole analogy is flawed anyway. If you can't unlock the door, just break a window. The stuff inside the house is the same in either case. We accept that there's a limit to the utility of a lock.

Where do you live, that new homes have locks like those? Because here new houses pretty much require class C anti-burglar doors (which roughly means, they should be impenetrable in less than 10 minutes) - they have non-standard keys and complicated locking mechanisms, door-frame is locked into concrete etc. etc. Otherwise cost of your insurance will go through the roof.

Where do you live? "Here" could mean South Africa, in which case you'd have a point. But it's also very much a special circumstance, as anyone from that part of the world would attest.

It's not that special. I live in Brooklyn, New York, and we're pretty keen on locks here too.

Where do you live such that those things are required to get a decent insurance rate? My insurance never mentioned a single one of those requirements.

I live in Sweden and I got a discount on my home insurance if my outside door is of a certain class (although apparently most reasonably modern outside doors you can buy cleared that bar so it can't have been that high).

Where do you live that your insurance company charges the same rate no matter how likely it is that they'll eventually need to pay out?

The locks I'm talking about are common throughout Western Europe.

The amount of support Apple got in this whole affair would seem to indicate that security is a feature many people care about.

Sure, but you'd tuck your tail between your legs a bit after all the grandstanding.

> I don't understand why people are going apeshit about this no one would bat an eye when the FBI picks a lock or breaks into a safe how is an iPhone different?

I have no problem with the FBI breaking into one phone that they have both a warrant for and have in their physical possession. That is how it's supposed to work.

I did, however, have problems with several other issues around this case (none of these have really gone away, only been postponed for now):

1. The FBI potentially being able to force a company to assist and do work for an investigation, as well as betray the privacy of its users

2. The government moving, partially based on this case, to force vendors to create back doors for everything, weakening security and privacy for everyone

3. The slippery slope that all of this would create

There's a reasonable chance either way, but I'd assume you'll not hear about it for quite a while unless you happen to be an agent.

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