“The No. 2 official at the Justice Department recently warned top Apple executives that stronger encryption protections added to iPhones would lead to a horrific tragedy, such as a child dying, because police couldn’t access a suspect’s device, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday,” Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica.
“The beefed up protections, Apple recently disclosed, mean that even when company officials are served with a court order, they will be unable to retrieve potentially crucial evidence such as photos, messages, or contacts stored on iPhones and iPads,” Goodin reports. “Instead, the data can be accessed only by people who know the passcode that serves as the encryption key.”
“Prior to changes introduced in iOS 8, Apple had the means to pull data off of a locked phone, and according to the WSJ, the company helped police do just that when it was served with a valid court order. Under the latest iOS version, the data can be recovered only by knowing the passcode. Passcodes that are sufficiently long and complex make it infeasible for Apple or anyone else to crack,” Goodin reports. “US Attorney General Eric Holder recently said it was ‘worrisome’ that tech companies were adding default encryption to consumer electronics. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently pushed back at a WSJ conference, saying ‘”Look, if law enforcement wants something, they should go to the user and get it. It’s not for me to do that.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in September:
Think of The Children™. Whenever you hear that line of horseshit, look for ulterior motives. Fear mongers: Those who use of fear, scare tactics, and emotional appeals in attempts to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end.
United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
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.Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
I don’t post often but can’t help myself at times. This statement coming from the DOJ that continues to catch and release illegal aliens, some are felons, some are not, only to be caught again after vehicle homicide or flat out murder. The DOJ under Eric Holder have become shameless and have no limits to their own hypocrisy.
well, according to Obola, they’re soon to be citizens.
Enjoy.
Unlock your phone or I’ll shoot this puppy!
yipe, yipe, yipe …
BS! Safety is never a good excuse for lack privacy from the government! BS! Our founding fathers gave clear warning of this.
Why is the story about Apple? If Apple doesn’t encrypt, use a Google encrypted phone, or the third party encryption apps.
“Why is the story about Apple?” — two possible reasons: (1) Other smartphone vendors caved to their demands, and Apple hasn’t; (2) cynical headline-mongering by the Feds is now accepted practice in this sorry excuse for a policy-addled administration.
What’s next?
“DOJ Warns A Dead Battery Will Lead To A Child Dying”
You can rest assured that when someone invokes “save the children” their rationale bucket is empty, or their real reason is publicly untenable.
No. 2 would have a shred of credibility if he could cite a single prior case of a child avoiding certain death because a phone’s encryption (or lack thereof) was able to be cracked.
This ‘Think About The Children!’ misdirection is centuries old. Within the DOJ, it was repeatedly used by Alberto Gonzales during the reign of George Bush II as justification for INjustice. Again: Good luck finding decent citizen representation or respect for the US Constitution from the REDs or the BLUEs. Overthrow and throw out BOTH worthless political parties.
Derek, there are only two ways to overthrow them: armed revolution, or an election upset sweeping a third party into power.
Both are difficult and costly, but both have been done before. And if the toads in Washington continue to foul the swamp, they might indeed croak. — The key is to unmask the demented puppet masters funneling money to PACs and bribe artists to subvert the political system for selfish personal ends.
Obscenely wealthy these hidden masters of affairs may be; but a powerful beam of light will reveal them as repulsive cockroaches feeding on the body politic, and voters will storm the polls!
Difficult or costly: We’d better get busy. Rolling over and playing dead to these crooks and traitors is NOT an option.
Oh for God’s sake, what did the police do before mobile phones?
doughnuts. they talked to their doughnuts.
They developed probable cause, got a warrant, seized the paper documents that proved the defendant’s guilt, and used the evidence to put them away and protect future victims. That is precisely what the Framers intended and why they worded the Fourth Amendment as they did. Does nobody here recognize that the process will not work if there are no readable documents to use as evidence?
Clever child pornographers and serial abusers do not keep paper records or unencrypted computer files. They keep the evidence of their crimes under encryption that it would take the NSA or FDB to break. Local police don’t have those resources, so these criminals will not be convicted, they will continue their crimes, and—yes—children will die.
You may consider that to be an acceptable price to pay for personal privacy. As Ben Franklin said, a lack of security is sometimes justified in the name of liberty. But please understand that there will be a price to pay. Be honest enough to admit that someone will pay that price, even if you are lucky enough not to be one of the affected families.
Please keep your political views to yourself!!!!
DOJ: YOU BASTARDS!
Blame Apple for the sick criminal acts of others. You’re INSANE.
Sorry, you sick BASTARDS, but the rights of We The People COME FIRST ALWAYS. We are NOT giving up our freedoms because you’re all loony about whatever.
Now STFU and follow the US Constitution for a change. THEN figure out your strategies for catching the psychopaths. INFURIATING! It makes me wonder just WHO is more sick: The kiddie molesting murders or the US Constitution molesting murderers. – Oh yes DOJ: Destroying the rights of We The People to have a responsible, sane, representative government has already murdered thousands of citizen’s lives. But you don’t care. To hell with Justice at the DOJ. Am I right?!
(No, I’m not having a mania attack. I’m upset that these enemies of We The People crossed a very blatant and terrible line with this Kill-The-Constitution garbage. It’s beyond TOO MUCH).
BTW: My usual thanks to Dan Goodin at Ars Technica for his article. He’s easily one of the best security writers on the net. It’s good to have him back from his leave of absence.
http://arstechnica.com/author/dan-goodin/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/beefed-up-iphone-crypto-will-lead-to-a-child-dying-doj-warned-apple-execs/
The, um, link to the article doesn’t work.
I think the DoJ needs to have a few words with the NSA about why encryption is suddenly so popular.
If someone’s life is at risk then maybe you should GET A FUCKING WARRANT!
Perhaps if you read the article rather than swearing you would understand that the DOJ official is talking about proper Fourth Amendment searches. You know, probable cause, impartial magistrate, written warrant specifically describing the place to be searched and things to be seized, and all that. The issue is that even with a warrant, there is no way for law enforcement to get useful data from a securely encrypted device.
Hence, there are going to be serious crimes—some of which will cost human lives—that will go unprosecuted for want of evidence. There are going to be life or death situations where “getting an f’ng warrant” will be useless and very bad things are going to happen.
You may believe, as most posters here obviously do, that protecting the privacy of accused criminals is more important than protecting their victims. It is your right to believe that, but it is not your right to swear at people for views that they simply do not hold. The DOJ argument is for providing some mechanism to allow lawful searches with a “f’ng warrant” to yield the results that the Fourth Amendment contemplates.
Oh, well if Holder is saying that then Apple should open the OS up ASAP!
NOT!!!!!!!
It’s just breathtaking how stupid the Department of Justice believes we, the people, are when it comes to knowing when they are just flat lying to us… They have, at their disposal, ALL the technologies to crack most anything tech companies throw at them – and more. What they are whining about in this program is a staged, intentional pitch of ‘woaa is me’…. What a crock.. They are simply lying thru their teeth..
Maybe the DOJ does, although I think you are underestimating the amount of computing power needed to crack decent encryption. I suspect that even the NSA can’t crack these cypher quickly. However, most crimes are investigated by local or state agencies that certainly do not have those resources.
By the logic of the DOJ, I am curious to hear about what we should do to prevent child deaths as far as choking hazards and chemical cleaners which are probably much more dangerous and critical to preventing deaths than the occasional criminal with an “unhackable” iOS 8+ device.
This stuff is serious.
If the FBI can’t tune in remotely to everyone’s hearing aids, watch microphones and shower cams then hearing challenged, fashion conscious, clean freak kidnappers will be free to kill all the children they want.
Is that the kind of neighborhood you want?
On a more serious note, we need to stop encryption from killing kids. Please tell your congressman to vote “No” when it comes to encrypting our children.
I hope your children never get molested by someone who escaped prosecution because all the nasty pictures of his last dozen victims were on his encrypted device. I don’t see any of the posters here offering up their own children’s security in exchange for a predator’s liberty.
There’s always away to take a predators liberty … It’s called “water-boarding”. You don’t even need one of them fancy computers either.
Executing a search warrant issued in compliance with the Fourth Amendment is hardly the same as coercing confessions in violation of the Fifth. You strict constructionists need to actually read the Constitution.
I’m sure Tim Cook already ran the numbers and it came in at less than “a” child. He’s good with numbers and stuff.
He ran the numbers quite a while ago, way before the DOJ played this last-ditch “child” card:—growing public alarm at out-of-hand government surveillance has turned privacy into a major selling point for Apple. Strong profit motive trumps public shame every time.
Official fear-mongering won’t work anyway, coming from the mouths of the very people spying on us. With most off what they tell us, they are showing us how stupid they think we are.
Yes, it’s very profitable for Apple to not have to deal with legal orders to decrypt data on the devices they sell anymore.
The more the public outcry about government intrusion into citizens’ private lives, the better privacy branded products will sell. Is that more clear?
Not denying that.. Just pointing out that all the human and financial resources that Apple has been expending on replying to such device data access requests is no longer in Apple’s hands thus no expenditure in that area anymore and no longer reduces profits.
I just read the fascinating article by Charles Bowden, “Blood on the corn”, about the kidnap, torture, and murder of a young DEA agent in Mexico in 1984 — al with the implication of the CIA (and with NSA-style surveillance of drug traffickers’ bank accounts worldwide). Who guards the guards? DOJ’s concerns about saving the life of “a child” ring hollow.
Government protecting kids? Just look at child protective services and see how many kids are dead because of them.
I am not aware of CPS killing any children. Children sometimes die because CPS failed to act or because they weren’t called until it was too late, but that is hardly a justification for attacking an agency that demonstrably saves a lot of lives every year.
“But think of the children!” has become the real world equivalent of Godwin’s Law–the last bastion of those without any real argument for whatever they’re advocating.