Signaling post-Snowden era, Apple’s iPhone, iPad lock out N.S.A.

12 years ago

Apple’s iOS, which powers the company’s revolutionary iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, “encrypts emails, photos and contacts based on a complex mathematical algorithm that uses a code created by, and unique to, the phone’s user — and that Apple says it will not possess,” David E. Sanger and Brian X. Chen report for The New York Times. “The result, the company is essentially saying, is that if Apple is sent a court order demanding that the contents of an iPhone 6 be provided to intelligence agencies or law enforcement, it will turn over gibberish, along with a note saying that to decode the phone’s emails, contacts and photos, investigators will have to break the code or get the code from the phone’s owner.”

“Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take ‘more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.’ (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes),” Sanger and Chen report. “Already the new phone has led to an eruption from the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey. At a news conference on Thursday devoted largely to combating terror threats from the Islamic State, Mr. Comey said, ‘What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law.'”

MacDailyNews Take: The supreme law of the United States of America, you lazy, whiny bastard, is the U.S. Constitution. You know, the thing you swore to uphold? Go read the Fourth Amendment for what sounds like will be the first time in your life.

Sanger and Chen report, “He cited kidnapping cases, in which exploiting the contents of a seized phone could lead to finding a victim, and predicted there would be moments when parents would come to him ‘with tears in their eyes, look at me and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t” decode the contents of a phone.”

MacDailyNews Take: Oh, puleeze. Enough with the vomit-inducing transparent bullshit fear mongering. Your illegal free pass has been rescinded.

“Company executives say the United States government brought these changes on itself. The revelations by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden not only killed recent efforts to expand the law, but also made nations around the world suspicious that every piece of American hardware and software — from phones to servers made by Cisco Systems — have “back doors” for American intelligence and law enforcement,” Sanger and Chen report. “Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has emphasized that Apple’s core business is to sell devices to people. That distinguishes Apple from companies that make a profit from collecting and selling users’ personal data to advertisers, he has said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: As a bonus, here’s a little lesson on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution for FBI Director James B. Comey:

You can take an iPhone 6 and shove it up your ass sideways, Jimmy. In fact, make it an iPhone 6 Plus.

Prior to 2007, when Steve Jobs gave the world the modern smartphone, there were no evidence bonanzas from warrantless searches and seizures available right in suspects’ pockets and, yet, somehow, law enforcement personnel and federal investigators actually managed to do the jobs that taxpayers paid them to do without infringing citizens’ basic constitutional rights. Use valid search warrants the way you used them before the iPhone existed.

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.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Edward W.” for the heads up.]