“Both Apple and the government just pulled out some fighting words,” Hilary Brueck reports for Fortune. “The feud comes as the two sides prepare to meet in court later this month to dispute whether Apple can be forced to help the government tap into encrypted information locked inside an iPhone.”
“On Thursday the Department of Justice issued a scathing brief, calling Apple’s stance in the case ‘corrosive’ and the company’s rhetoric false,” Brueck reports. “The 43-page court brief also accused Apple of deliberately blocking access for the U.S. government, while cooperating with the Chinese. The DOJ claimed Apple traded confidential customer information with the Chinese government in exchange for access to Chinese markets.”
“Apple responded to the news by airing the fight to the press, hopping on a call with reporters Thursday evening. On the call, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell accused the government of trying to vilify the company,” Brueck reports. “Sewell said the latest filing was a surprising shift in tone from the way the government and the company normally get along. Sewell called the move simply a “cheap shot,” as The New York Times reports. ‘In 30 years of practice, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo,’” Sewell said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Only one of these entities is competent. The other? Not so much.
Let’s take a look at how well they run their respective houses:
• Apple: Over $215 billion in cash on hand
• U.S. federal government: Over $19 trillion in debtSome additional perspective:
• 1 million seconds equal 11 and 1/2 days.
• 1 billion seconds equal 31 and 3/4 years.
• 1 trillion seconds equal 31,710 years.SEE ALSO:
U.S. government rebuts Apple claim on password reset in iPhone case – March 11, 2016
Apple: U.S. Justice Dept attempting to ‘smear’ company by taking a ‘cheap shot’ – March 10, 2016
This is going to get real ugly.
“The DOJ claimed Apple traded confidential customer information with the Chinese government in exchange for access to Chinese markets.”
Any facts to substantiate this claim? It doesn’t matter, just keep accusing Apple of something and feed the propaganda machine.
Apple, I hope your bags are packed if the fight does not go your way. Remember your clients are the worlds, not just some fifth rate despot nation.
Apple already has operations in Ireland and has some good will there. I hope they pack up and move their corporate offices over to Cork, and leave Cupertino an empty, abandoned circular waste, just like the Superconducting Supercollider in Texas was abandoned by budget weenies, leaving the discovery of the Higgs boson to the Euros.
The American attitude used to mean something in the lives and aspirations of young people looking to the future, the world over. Lately that’s been made dirty by government officials who’d rather play with themselves than remember to do their jobs.
If moving offshore would stop DOJ and FBI from harassing Apple, I might actually support that.
Now doing business out of Tonga?
An incompetent who wants something must resort to intimidation. That’s the situation with our government.
The best way to deal with intimidation is to say FU and give the incompetent a swift kick in the balls.
Let’s hope Apple is wearing their pointed shoes.
It’s not Apple that’s corrosive, it’s the people who are being paid by our tax dollars.
With all the dough they vacuum out of our wallets, they ought to be taking an expensive shot rather than a cheap one..clownz
Time to write your congressman and the president
and let them know this is not acceptable period.
Simple Solution.
Apple, move your corporate headquarters offshore to a friendly third world country that you can control with bribes (very American thing to do). Tell US government to go fuck themselves.
Work to make encryption even more difficult to assess and attack. Create system that destroys itself after 10 failed logins. Create system that self destructs if CPU is tampered with.
If Apple moved to another country President Trump would lead the effort to ban Apple products in the U.S, and because the American public is so easily brainwashed by government/mainstream propaganda and sugary treats they would fully support this action.
But let’s say it gets closer to the Fall and it looks like Trump will take the Presidency. I can easily see the military take down Obama via a fake coup, and rule for maybe two years. Then new elections would be held. I don’t have any inside knowledge that this is the plan, but at least this play is MUCH less draconian than what they were considering near the end of Bush’s Presidency. Let’s see if Trump plays ball. He does like to cut deals…
Full blown Civil war erupts first.
If Trump plays ball. He does like to cut deals. So does Obama, as long as you agree to his “deal”.
I’ll smuggle in iPhones from Canada.
Why bother, just go north of the 54th parallel. Vancouver would make a pretty good HQ. And Canadians understands the difference between conservative and whacko.
MDN’s take is 100% irrelevant. No matter what the DOJ (or anyone else says) with regard to this case it does not matter if Apple makes a single penny in profit, trillions in profit or if Apple is on the verge of bankruptcy. Similarly, it has nothing to do with the U.S. Government debt or deficit.
And, with regard to Apple putting servers in China… Apple did put them there as part of a compromise to be allowed to sell products in China.
But… Guess what? Apple has many, many more servers in the U.S. What would those cities/states think (and what political pressure would they bring to the fight) if they thought Apple were going to move all those servers to India or Saudi Arabia or South Africa or even France or the U.K.?
Apple gives the Chinese government no more access to what is on those servers in China than it does to U.S. government entities (federal, state, and local) for those servers located in the U.S.
This is very different than what Blackberry (nee RIM) did in the U.A.E. where the U.A.E. forced RIM to put servers in the U.A.E. AND forced RIM to give the U.A.E. government the keys to all the encrypted message traffic within, going into, or going out of the U.A.E. Apple did no such thing with China no matter how much the DoJ wants the court (and the public) to think they did.
The DoJ, in many aspects of their recent filing, is bordering on lying to the court. If the court had any sense of justice at all the court would sanction (fine) those lawyers for intentionally trying to mislead the court. (But, as people have read my statements on other topics on this site, the U.S. courts have zero interest in justice. For the U.S. courts it’s all about a legal system and 0% about a justice system.)
The point MDN was trying to make was an example of competence, or lack there of.
I still gave you five stars for a great post.
The Chinese don’t deserve the protection that the free world does.
I can’t believe that the US Government wants a Communist Chinese solution to keep track of its citizens.
That’s something that China has in common with Apple’s current home nation.
What legal defense could Apple have against a direct subpoena of the source code and software certificate?
Unlawful search and seizure. It’s still in the constitution last time I checked.
Since corporations are now considered citizens, why not the 5th?
This is the digital age lets do it right. iPhones have encryption, the encrypted password is save in cloud.
Only certain Federal judges have an authorization key device that can only be accessed with biometrics and code and is encrypted like the Apple Pay encryption system
Government gets a warrant to access an iPhone and gets three judges to agree with warrant. The three judges must be unanimous, if any of the 3 judges declines the phone remains locked, the warrant is declined and the government can not reissue the warrant again.
Then all three judges have issued the activation key the password is decrypted and sent to the judge to give to the party that issued the warrant in court. The decrypted password has a time factor. After x days the password is reset in the phone.
The key authorizations can not have the same 3 judges in another case for a lockout period of time. Keeps governments from going to same judges all the time.
Government pays for everything and comes out of their budgets, FBI, NSA, DOJ with no additions funds offered by Congress.
That sounds like a great system for a dictatorship. What is the benefit to this keyed system, putting millions of iPhones at risk of stolen keys and unlawful search, so that the government can access as many as 15-20 iPhones per year? Don’t add systems that can be exploited to systems that can’t be exploited.
The US is ~180 Trillion in debt counting unfunded liabilities. Another reason I am a Voluntarist.
https://www.freedomainradio.com
Rhetoric, propaganda and induced ignorance for the purpose of ruining MY county.
FBI Director James Comey deserves the boot.