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Comment by xd1936 | Hacker News Reader

xd1936·

I wonder if one of these was used by the FBI's unlocking tool from the San Bernardino shooter case. That sort of just... fizzled out, with the FBI saying they could unlock iPhones themselves. Everybody kind of just said "yikes" to that statement and moved on...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

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I mean, the whole point of that issue was that the FBI wanted Apple to develop tools that would make it a lot easier for the FBI to do it later if they wanted to. It probably cost them a lot of money/time to do it the way they did. Plus, wasn't that the suspect's work phone anyway? So there really couldn't even be much that would have incriminated him on that phone. The point was setting a technological precedent.

> the FBI wanted Apple to develop tools that would make it a lot easier for the FBI to do it later if they wanted to. It probably cost them a lot of money/time to do it the way they did

No, they wanted to set a legal precedent.

Precedent was already on the FBI's side, just as in the Lavabit case.

AIUI the mechanism the FBI used was already known to not work on newer devices at that time and only worked because the iPhone in question didn't have a secure enclave.

I don't think so... these look like privilege escalations for apps, not a way to unlock the phone.

I consider all of these likely-

>FBI found someone inside they could negotiate with(IE- better patents or the threat of denied patents)

>FBI found someone they could bribe

>FBI hacked and broke into the iphone

3/3 of those Apple wants to keep quiet.

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