The broad pro-Apple, anti FBI argument is that by helping them to hack a terrorist's phone, a dangerous precedent will have been set, significantly diminishing the privacy of everyone else. Is this really the case, or has the 'crowd' got it wrong?
Before continuing, be warned that this piece is a non-standard contribution to securtycheck.uk and more useful short practical pieces, on issues such as the correct fitment of CO detectors will resume shortly. This is an impromptu, 'big issue' piece and will be one of several looking at privacy, the draft Investigatory Powers Bill and the use and abuse of personal data in today's and tomorrow's world.
If you have yet to hear of this story, which has attracted global interest, this Guardian piece presents typical coverage. It and, just as importantly, a typical array of commenters, are broadly in strong support of Apple. Even Edward Snowden is reported as backing Apple, against the FBI.
Whilst I am pro privacy and generally suspicious of any effort to equip the establishment with yet more access to personal data, on this one, I am of the few siding with the FBI. Increasing the chances of the FBI accessing encrypted data on a terrorist's phone, helps them to prevent future atrocities. Doing so does NOT unduly threaten the privacy of everyone else, merely potential terrorists and criminals, provided publicly agreed due process is followed.
I will explain more about the encryption access support that the FBI are requesting, below. First, why in my view, the likes of Google, WhatsApp and others, seemingly from across the political spectrum, including most Guardian commenter's, are backing Apple's current refusal to cooperate.
In addition to the war on terror, there is another global war raging today, strategically at least as important. This hidden war, between neoliberals and society is even more 'asymmetric' and the numerous parties involved often do not even realize they are in it.If the neoliberals win, the role of states will be virtually eradicated and, ultimately, between 100 and 1,000 megacorporations and oligarchs will end up controlling virtually everything in a decreasingly civilized world.
On the neoliberal side there are very influential groups, businesses and think-tanks, including the Tea Party Movement, Fox News and the Cato Institute. I would also place in this non-declared camp, many US venture capital and hedge fund businesses, plus many of the world's big technology and Internet companies. Even when they have benefited massively from state support, such as via DARPA research, they are all trying to push back the boundaries of state operations. Motivations include (in my view, misplaced) philosophy, profit maximization and power.
This neoliberal grouping is hugely influential over many key print, TV and internet channels, via which the public at large glean information to form views. Their mantras, include repeated stories of the trickle-down benefits of free markets, whereby we all gain from allowing entrepreneurs and engineers to freely innovate, and also about the serious failings of state apparatus.
Expensive failures, even when, as in the case of multiple military aircraft contracts, these occur in the private sector, are always pinned on the state. Likewise, global successes, such as the Internet, which resulted from research by CERN and DARPA, and the smart-phone, where most of the underpinning technologies were spin-outs from yet more publicly funded research, are privatized.
It is precisely because of these repeatedly spun yarns, that many non-neoliberals have been duped into backing Apple's non-cooperation in their comments: it seems both right and 'cool' to back them.
If the world's state apparatus' succumb to these global corporate giants, who are already winning on many fronts, through being allowed to recklessly arbitrage between states to minimize tax and regulatory exposures, all our safety and security will be permanently diminished. Check out Bhopal, Minamata, Fukushima, and so on. Unbridled, such entities have no interest in security or safety. For all who care about a sustainably functioning society, it would be great if FBI won this battle.
For an informed argument backing Apple, this from InfoWorld seems pretty good. Their concerns are that if a 'backdoor' was created, it would eventually get into the hands of 'bad guys'; that succumbing to FBI pressure here would set a dangerous precedent and that, ultimately, such state organizations are not to be trusted. Reference is even made the the cautionary words of the 'founding fathers'.
As explained below, I do not see that Apple is being required to create a 'backdoor'. The 'bad guys' argument is fundamentally flawed and, when it comes to trust, in this case I back the state over a stateless, profit focused corporation. As for recounting the words of the 'founding fathers', I am forever suspicious of any argument which claims authority from its interpretation of ancient texts.
A guess at what the FBI are requesting (and a recommendation to Apple - were they to notice).
When this was originally written, I admitted to not having reading ANY notes before, but the following has been substantially revised after a reading of this InfoWorld piece.
It would seem the FBI think there may be important data on the smartphone that they would like to access, but to do this they need to decrypt the memory. Given that the billing engine of the phone system operator will have details of phone calls made to and from the handset, it seems they are more interested in app data, including chat sessions, browsing history and assorted files.
To make use of encrypted data in the phone's memory an operating system has to decrypt it using a decryption process, crucially, in combination with the 'key' used to encrypt it in the first place.The key in the case of the iPhone 5c that the FBI wish to interrogate, is generated by a process within the phone, that combines its unique hardware identifier number with the user's access code.
Even with modern supercomputers, knowledge of the hardware identifier, encryption process and rough length of the access code. it could take years to generate and try a winning key, where, as in the case with this phone, attempts are limited by on-board protections against 'brute force attacks'.
Originally, I assumed the FBI would have been able to get at the hardware by dismantling the phone, so as to then be able to tap into the data bus and recreate a bit-by-bit copy of all the non volatile data. Once this had been extracted, with a rough knowledge of how the encrypted data was arranged, it could have then attempted to decrypt the contents with a brute-force attack.
Per InfoWorld, with, in this case an iPhone 5c, where the encryption is less strong than in the iPhone 5s and beyond, it seems the FBI requested Apple prepare a firmware update to render the phone's brute force attack protections useless. This would allow them to run potentially millions of code attempts on start-up via the lightening socket, to find a match for the original access-password.
More advanced phones have much tougher encryption, but, with knowledge of the underling hardware and software, even these are theoretically 'crackable' with today's technology, although it may take some time. Software to aid cracking encryption in phones, is not, in my view, creating a 'backdoor' for the bad guys to exploit. This is because, 'backdoors', reside on the premises. This approach could instead be likened to assembling specialist equipment for a rescue access tunnel.
Here another issue comes to light: maybe there IS a back-door, which Apple, the second most valuable company in the world after Google, fears would be devastatingly expensive in terms of lost global consumer confidence and shareholder value, if ever revealed.
Would assisting the FBI place Apple in a difficult situation with China and other states, which deliver much of its shareholder value? Maybe. A possible fix here could be an 'extraordinary measures' addition to its constitution, whereby, prior to each incidence, it first had to assemble an international oversight meeting, funded by the requesting state, with no guarantee of success. Regardless, Apple's responsibility to society here should trump its fiduciary duty to shareholders. This is not just a case of law, which might be tortuously side-stepped, but of citizenship.
For all our sakes, for faith in the fact that corporations can be responsible citizens, Apple needs to do 'the right thing' and, after what has now been a sufficiently long enough period of troubled philosophical introspection, it should formulate a way out of this mess, and assist the FBI. Of course, the 'rescue tunnel' this time will not be rescuing Chilean or Chinese miners, but the rightful acknowledged supremacy of a democratically mandated state apparatus.
There are of course many related BIG issues, but until they are touched upon in future posts and this messy brain-dump of a post is possibly edited further, thank you for your time.
