March 28, 2024

Biting the Apple

Feb. 26, 2016

We’ve learned two important things recently involving Apple iPhones. First, their encryption software is really good. Second, the government will go to bizarre lengths to discover a backdoor way to get around that encryption.

The story is already well told that a husband and wife team of murderers attacked people in San Bernardino, California, then died in a subsequent gun battle with police. They did so, they claimed, in solidarity with the murderous thugs we now refer to as ISIS or ISIL.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies investigated, and are still investigating, the crime.

The criminals took great pains to destroy or dispose of their personal cell phones and computers, leaving behind an iPhone owned by San Bernardino County and issued to the male perpetrator who worked there.

Law enforcement asked Apple to provide them access to the contents of the countyowned phone. Apple cooperated as fully as they could, providing all information from the phone currently residing in one of those ubiquitous “clouds” where everything electronic now seems to go.

The FBI, though, wanted everything, including any information not stored in the cloud. This is where it starts to get interesting.

Apple’s latest iPhone operating system comes with built-in encryption software for passwords. Absent the password, you cannot get into the phone. Try 10 times unsuccessfully and the phone automatically erases everything. The idea was to protect whatever personal information might be lurking in there in the event the phone was lost or stolen.

Apparently the encryption works pretty well since the FBI has been unable to crack it. They first asked, then demanded via court order that Apple hack into the phone. They need to know, they say, if anyone else was involved in the San Bernardino massacre and who the criminals might have been contacting.

That all seems to make perfect sense, especially given we’ve now been conditioned to accept virtually any intrusion into our lives in the name of the war on terror.

So why doesn’t Apple just do the “right thing” and turn over the backdoor to their own encryption? Because no such thing exists, and intentionally so. There is little point in creating elaborate security for your customers and then creating a way around it.

The FBI, and now the courts, have demanded software that does not exist and told Apple, well, if it doesn’t exist, then you have to create it. Apple, understandably, is appealing the court order and, presumably, will continue to do so up the appellate food chain as far as they need to go.

Their argument is the security of every iPhone with an encrypted password would be compromised. They have reasons to be skeptical of FBI assertions the code-breaking algorithm Apple will be forced to create, at some considerable expense, will be used only in this single case.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been lobbying Congress and the White House aggressively for legislation forcing all smart phone, tablet and laptops using encryption provide a backdoor for law enforcement.

The backdoor would be an open invitation to hackers worldwide, not to mention the handful of law enforcement personnel with nefarious intent.

With an encryption-breaking algorithm from Apple, law enforcement would have its backdoor and there is little reason to be confident it wouldn’t, probably sooner than later, fall into the wrong hands.

Apple’s hard won reputation for secure devices would end with the inexplicable stroke of a judge’s pen. Apple would have little choice but to start over from scratch and create new encryption software.

There is another issue at play here that approaches the bizarre. Issuing an order requiring Apple to turn over something that doesn’t exist and then insisting it be created seems to be a brand new law, preposterous on its face. We demand you give us X. Well, X doesn’t exist. Then make X and give it to us.

And don’t worry, we won’t do anything to put the tens of million of encrypted iPhones at risk. Trust us.

Apple shouldn’t be forced to breach their own security to create something that doesn’t exist just so the FBI can gain the backdoor access they have been unable to acquire through legislation. Even in the name of the war on terror.

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Meanwhile it would appear the redevelopment around the Park Place will include a manufacturing facility or a warehouse of some kind. At least that’s what the conceptual plans to replace the iconic dome look like.

The developers are asking for $19 million in brownfield redevelopment funds for their $50 million project. If taxpayers will be footing the bill for at least 38 percent of the project (it will likely be more once they’re done asking for other corporate welfare readily available), perhaps they could provide us with something, well... let’s see... less hideous.

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