“One of the more compelling institutional cage-matches in the last few years, Apple vs. the FBI, ended in an anti-climax March 28,” Lev Grossman writes for TIME Magazine. “As denouements go it wasn’t particularly dramatic. It’s hard to tell who even won.”
“The FBI got its data, whatever it was, we still don’t know,” Grossman writes. “Apple got to stick to its principles—I spoke to Cook for a TIME cover story two weeks ago, when it was abundantly clear that there was no way Cook was going to give an inch on this one, unless the law compelled him to. Apple would’ve liked to take this issue to Congress and get the legal landscape clarified; it didn’t get that. The FBI didn’t get to set the legal precedents it sought either.”
“The FBI did salvage an angstrom of pride by opening the phone without Apple’s help. The whole saga had served as an extended advertisement for the strength of the iPhone’s security, and conversely it was making the FBI look technologically weak,” Grossman writes. “Even though Apple’s products wound up looking that less secure, the outcome does strengthen Apple’s reputation as a defender of privacy, and its claim that strong encryption isn’t a security disaster.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The FBI attempted to never let a serious crisis go to waste, despicably using dead terrorism victims to try to force the courts and public opinion to grant them a skeleton key into iOS. The FBI either lied that they were unaware that there were other ways to get into that specific iPhone (Cellebrite is well-known; even Apple uses their services) than by trying to unconstitutionally force Apple engineers to write whatever the government dictated or they’re staffed by utter incompetents or both.
Apple stuck to its guns and won. They could cement the win by buying Cellebrite or by using courts to forcing the FBI to divulge the method and then, after testing, state that all newer iPhones which contain the Secure Enclave have always been immune to hacking via the method the FBI paid a third party to employ (NAND-mirroring) on the terrorist’s San Bernadino-issued iPhone 5C.
We await the next case with bated breath.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s new challenge: Learning how the U.S. cracked terrorist’s iPhone – March 29, 2016
Did the FBI just unleash a hacker army on Apple? – March 29, 2016
Apple declares victory in battle with FBI, but the war continues – March 29, 2016
Apple vows to increase security as FBI claims to break into terrorist’s iPhone – March 29, 2016
U.S. government drops Apple case after claiming hack of terrorist’s iPhone – March 29, 2016
Meet Cellebrite, the Israeli company reportedly cracking iPhones for the FBI – March 24, 2016