FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple on Thursday “for developing forms of smartphone encrytption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when when they have valid search warrants,” Craig Timberg and Greg Miller report for The Washington Post.
“His comments were the most forceful yet from a top government official but echo a chorus of denunciation from law enforcement officials nationwide. Police have said that the ability to search photos, messages and Web histories on smartphones is essential to solving a range of serious crimes, from murder to child pornography to attempted terrorist attacks,” Timberg and Miller report. “‘There will come a day when it will matter a great great deal to the lives of people…that we will be able to gain access’ to such devices, Comey told reporters in a briefing. ‘I want to have that conversation [with companies responsible] before that day comes.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Fear mongering. How did these people do their jobs before 2007 when Steve Jobs delivered the smartphone to the world?
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
“He said he could not understand why companies would ‘market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law,'” Timberg and Miller report. “Comey’s remarks followed news last week that Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, is so thoroughly encrypted that the company is unable to unlock iPhones or iPads for police… For detectives working a tough case, few types of evidence are more revealing than a smartphone… But the era of easy law enforcement access to smartphones may be drawing to a close as courts and tech companies erect new barriers to police searches of popular electronic devices.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A note to FBI Director James B. Comey: Dear lazy bastard, stop whining and go read the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution for what sounds like will be the first time in your life.
Again, prior to 2007, there were no evidence bonanzas from warrantless searches and seizures available right in suspects’ pockets and, yet, somehow, law enforcement personnel actually managed to solve crimes without infringing citizen’s basic constitutional rights. Use valid search warrants the way you used them before Steve Jobs gave the world the modern smartphone and tablet.
Let’s go back to following the U.S. Constitution, shall we? If it takes force from leaders like Apple for constitutional rights to be enforced, so be it.
Related articles:
Apple thinks different about privacy – September 23, 2014
Apple’s iOS Activation Lock reduces iPhone thefts, Samsung phone thefts skyrocket – September 18, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for government, police – even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
Would you trade privacy for national security? Most Americans wouldn’t – August 6, 2014
Apple begins encrypting iCloud email sent between providers – July 15, 2014
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
U.S. NSA seeks to build quantum computer to crack most types of encryption – January 3, 2014
Apple’s iMessage encryption trips up U.S. feds’ surveillance – April 4, 2013
Now that’s good PR for Apple!!!
Exactly what I was thinking. This is exactly the kind of PR Apple needs defending truth, justice, and freedom’s way.
Although, it is likely a narrative constructed by Apple PR given to the FBI. What better way to make folks think their phone is completely safe? Apple gives key to FBI in exchange for them doing this press conference and denouncing Apple. My tin foil hat is kinda heavy on my head but do you really think this is far fetched?
Yes. But I suspect you’ll keep it on.
There would be evidence. Someone would figure it out. That’s why I hate tinfoil. There’s no need for evidence for the tinfoil crowd. And even when the evidence is powerfully indicating the truth, a tinfoil hat can shield it. Or turn it into “part of the conspiracy.”
To the government, our civil liberties are an afterthought if they are even thought of at all.
When our own government refuses to follow the dictates of our constitution, that is when they prove themselves to be TRAITORS.
The Founding Fathers understood the nature of governments and the men who run them. They did not understand that their carefully crafted three part system would become corrupted over time. The Judicial Branch has become a partisan mouthpiece with strong political affiliations, despite their lifetime appointments that were supposed to enable their independence from political pressures. The Legislative Branch has become bought and paid for tools of business interests with one goal, reelection to 535 of the best jobs in the country, despite the Constitutional provision that their pay be limited to reimbursement for travel and lodging expenses while in Washington. They are not supposed to make careers of the job. The Executive Branch is doing pretty much what the Founding Fathers expected, overreaching, except when reined in by the other two branches. But I see the problem as the complete failure of the Legislative and Judicial branches to behave as intended. The Executive branch is pretty much true to the Founding Fathers expectations.
All well stated. What all the foolish people undermining the US government don’t comprehend is that their behavior makes the USA irrelevant in the world and ruins its future. These people are careless parasites who are killing their host, and therefore themselves and their future. I call this the Self-Destructive Imperative. These days it’s a product of short term thinking leading directly to long term disaster. It’s the most baffling aspect of humanity in my experience, part of the overall problem of we humans being capable of believing almost anything to be ‘absolutely’ true.
The political bent at MDN is all part of this same insipid short-sightedness.
“…market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law..”
What a stupid statement. It’s a device to keep *him* and his ilk from placing themselves beyond the law. Asshat.
My post on the WaPo website on the original story:
“Tell the Federal Bureau of Intimidation to go pound sand. When you get a warrant based upon probable cause you can peek at my stuff. Until then it is none of your damn business.
The cops need to get back on the leash and remember exactly who pays the bills, who grants the government their authority and who can revoke it. That goes from the Feds to the local boys and girls in blue.
My privacy is not negotiable, it is not a joke and it is not taken lightly.
I am more worried about the FBI and NSA running around unaccountable- not some citizen’s phone files.”
I shake my head at the thought of all that money wasted on gathering petabytes of useless information.
Think of iOS 8 as a catalyst for reducing government spending.
Imagine the electricity and water needed to run that data center in the Utah desert. Water and electricity are not free and water is quite scarce in Utah.
Pffff. “…allow people to place themselves beyond the law.” If anything, I am placing YOU within the law is what I am doing. Privacy is my right and that shall not be infringed.
Thanks, you beat me to it.
He has is exactly backwards.
Oh no, here comes PatriotGate.
Didn’t Blackberry keep, at least according to them, BBM messages out of law enforcement snooping as well?
Don’t remember the FBI complaining back then.. I wonder why,
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that the message was decrypted on BB severs before encrypted to the destination giving law enforcement a way to demand data from BB.
BB kept saying that it’s peer2peer encryption, but then I always ask myself that if Tantra were true, then what was all that hoopla about BB server locations (in India, Pakistan) a while back.
Either way, BB had your key. So they can decrypt on request.
Screw the FBI and screw James B Comey!
Does anyone else see the irony in his last name.
This country was suppose to be about we the people, not we the Government.
If law enforcement is angry about not being able to easily search my phone, then Apple made the right decision.
Oh no! Here comes another false flag event. Concocted by the government to kill a few thousand civilians. After which they will be able to do anything they want. giving up keys to your privacy will seem so trivial.
Heh. People are really starting to see through the
Create Problem
Cause Big Reaction
Offer New “Safer” Solutions
big game bullshit.
My guess is that the Feds have been secretly bullying Apple (and other tech co’s) and abusing the fact that Apple could crack iOS devices. I also suspect that if the Feds had not abused Apple and Apples customers then Apple would not have locked out LEOs.
In other words I bet there is far more to this then we will ever know.
#MyStupidGovernment at work:
He said he could not understand why companies would ‘market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law
No, idiots. The problem is why my government would ever prove to be THEMSELVES ‘beyond the law’. The FBI, NSA, ad nauseam proved that they CANNOT BE TRUSTED. So of course we citizens who RESPECT THE LAW are forced to ENFORCE our Fourth Amendment Rights.
IOW: Hey #MyStupidGovernment! You screwed us over. YOU OWN THIS. You are getting what you deserve:
We The People PROTECTING OURSELVES whenever our government becomes criminal. It shall forever be so.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
“There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation (United States of America) if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand it’s meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit, to the extent that it’s in my control.”
– John F. Kennedy on April 27, 1961
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
[Yes, my local elected officials know very well my POV on these matters and they agree with me!]
And YES #MyStupidGovernment: If you present ME with a legal warrant to surveil MY private information, I will provide it to you. NEVER before then. That’s my right. YOU are my employee. Follow MY laws!
The Headline “FBI blasts Apple for protective users’ privacy by locking government, police out of iPhones and iPads” is false, as is the statement.
Apple merely decided to protect its customers privacy by APPLE not storing customer’s private information at all…as this allows hacking and government abuse. Apple did not “lock ANYBODY out”. Apple just decided NOT to aid ANYONE (including Apple) to get to their customer’s info. Good for them.
Agreed! The article above is based on the “perception” that Apple locked them out with encription codes. NOT SO! Apple made it so that the end user has control, not Apple! Two different worlds.
So, now people are complaining that Apple is NOT bending? 😉
(go ahead, I deserve the negative stars for that one)
You know that the FBI has already cracked the code. This public complaining is just for show.
No, actually, it’s to focus attention away from those companies who are acquiescing quietly. Think about who’s not being called out. Any names come to mind?
Perhaps Comey should also be complaining to those who wrote the forth amendment. It seems to be interfering with their investigations of serious crimes, from murder to child pornography to attempted terrorist attacks.
Damn! I think they just started a file on me. 😉
“Damn! I think they just started a file on me.”
No. We just added to it.
Maybe the Feds should take a few minutes to read the Constitution before they wipe their ass with it.
+10,000 on the MDN take.
Waaaaaaahhhhh…. 🙁
Fuck! The comments on this story are seriously deranged. What a bunch of crying arseholes you all are. I hope it’s your dad, sister, child who gets murdered because a detective doing their job was prevented from arresting someone before they killed next. But in country where murder seems to be the national sport why am I surprised by all these comments?
And where are you from, Tinkerbell?
Given your spelling of asshole, I’d guess you’re not from around here. In Great Britain, this is the theory of policing:
The Nine Principles of Policing:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
Here we get the police armed with surplus military weapons, ready to use them on the public at a moments notice, especially if the victim is non-white. Witness the difference in police handling of the Cliven Bundy armed standoff with protectors of a known scofflaw compared to the actions in Ferguson, MO.
Those differences understood, I’d be more inclined to feel OK about the actions of Scotland Yard compared to the FBI (can you believe the shooting of 150 suspects while in custody with not one being improper in any way? I don’t) and US law enforcement in general.
Outatown fuckface.
That lost huh? Just ask the nice man at the front of your short yellow bus.
If your ok giving up your rights, post your email address , passwords, where you live, where you work..
I bet you don’t
So here we have a country that worships it’s military, yet any other arm of government, such as police, and the government itself, is despised. At least, by the people on this website. Where’s the logic in that? You sit safely behind your keyboards while the only thing between your family’s safety and social disintegration is that same government and it’s various policing forces. Just imagine if those hated police took a year off. Half the US population would be wiped out in the first year as the gangs took over. Fourth Amendment and your “rights”, pah! The stupidity and naivety of the comments and attitudes on this page are staggering. What about the individual’s right to live?
Well, not everyone DOES worship the military. But that is largely irrelevant. We can admire the grunt and the occasional hero cop. But there are all too many rogue elements in both the military and the police to go charging to their defense in knee-jerk fashion. That’s how you end up with prisoners in dog collars in Abu Ghraib posted to Instagram.
That’s how you end up with dead unarmed teens and police financed by asset forfeiture who never forget their first taste.
Wake the hell up and look around, man.
I can tell you exactly what would happen if the police took a year off. The wealthy communities could then hire more responsive private security forces who would have to compete for those dollars instead of a tax-corercing organization with a monopoly on the use of force.
iPhone encryption is not perilous but ‘parallel reconstruction’ certainly is.
Awwww sounds like the Fecal Bureaucrats of Instigation has their panties all tied in a knot. Awwwwww. too bad, this will certainly put a crimp on the advancement of the warmongering, terrorist wannabe nation.
Let’s go through the pile of manure that’s spewing forth from the erector just for fun.
It’s a dream to go beyond “encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information” to encryption so secure that no one can easily gain access to personal information on your device, especially terroristic government organizations that use and create laws to cover up their unethical, immoral and criminal acts.
Here’s another laugh: “Police have said that the ability to search photos, messages and Web histories on smartphones is essential to solving a range of serious crimes, from murder to child pornography to attempted terrorist attacks.”
Really now is that so? Well hey listen up, here’s a crime for you, the second Iraq war. A very serious crime against humanity and there is tons of evidence for you including a presentation to the United Nations where the masterminds of the crime presented fake evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Oh but it’s not legal to send a president to the Hague to answer for crime against humanity. Just as it’s legal to torture people, spy on others, industrial espionage and become a threat to world security.
There will come a day when it will matter a great deal to the lives of people…that those on the high ethical and moral ground stands up to the global bully and bring them to justice.
Now if you can’t understand why companies would “market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.” let me explain it in words you might understand. The law is usually ethical, but not always. Laws under the Nazis was not ethical and neither are laws allowing torture. Don’t try to spin it, it still comes out scum.
“And a surprising number of criminals, police say, like to take selfies posing with accomplices — and often the loot they stole together.” Absolutely, heck I remember that criminal George W. Bush with the Mission Accomplished sign right behind him.
Here is a kicker: “the most sophisticated law enforcements agencies can deliver malicious software to phones capable of making them spy on users.” Yup, that’s why the encryption is so important, because you scum can do that, and you have on your allies, and others. Not only spy but cause industrial espionage and sabotage. Yes, malicious, it’s a word that goes well with much of what has become of the United Hates.
“The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.” That’s right, along with the average Amurdercan, the average citizen of the free world and initialed scum from the United Hates. It’s due to a great product and the fact that people believe it or not want their privacy respected, something certainly not demonstrated by this article.
There is a lot of scum out there. When you turn a blind eye to the ones doing torture and crimes against humanity and let one of your government organizations (the NSA) spies like it does and does industrial espionage and sabotage like you’ve done, and cover it up with your own obtuse laws, you kind of end up being part of the scum.
Great take MDN, unfortunately the U.S. Constitution resides on toilet paper these days, and I’m getting the idea that there are people who just don’t wipe.
F&<k em, the gift of warrantless personal privacy invasion is over.
The MDN take is spot-on. 😎👍
Having strong encryption does not necessarily shield an individual from being compelled by a judge to surrender the password. http://www.wired.com/2014/09/google-apple-wont-unlock-phone-court-can-make/
You do not have to surrender a password under the 5th amendment. It’s in your noodle. It is not in contempt of court. But I am sure they will try.