Apple Gets Tech Support Against DOJ
Apple is not unsupported in its battle against the government over encryption.
Multiple Companies have come out in support of Apple’s battle with the US Justice Department. Amazon, Cisco, Dropbox, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Twitter and Yahoo are among the companies supporting Apple in its battle over iPhone encryption.
Apple
Many don’t understand why Apple can’t just break the encryption and hand the now unlocked phone back so the FBI can do their thing. Privacy is still there so users and Apple are happy. FBI got their unlocked phone with information so they are happy.
Cell phones don’t have sophisticated firewalls and access controls for it’s too resource heavy with limited port bandwidth. Desktop computers and laptops have thousands of logical ports. Iphones maybe have five.
What that means is if there is a known backdoor, it goes through a port, which is narrowed down to one of maybe five as opposed to one of maybe 65000 on a desktop. To fix this would be closed loop, and such backdoors are coded out of the operating system by design as part of the secure software development lifecycle.
If Apple creates a backdoor through the passcode lock, as the FBI are requesting, then millions of iPhones become vulnerable to hackers. What the FBI wants is a back door into all iPhones, potentially creating a huge security issue. It would open all personal and private data to be accessed by the FBI or NSA whenever. I don’t think anyone wants those organizations accessing personal information whenever they want. It starts a slippery slope that leads to listening in on phone calls, reading text messages, and subsequently selling the data to interested buyers.
Remember, the technology to break the encryption needs to be created. In this world, if something exists, it is never kept secret. We also know money talks so we can plot out the series of plausible events. Apple creates technology for the “one time use”. One person on the team gets an offer they can’t refuse, sells the technology, and suddenly everything we thought was safe is no longer. I believe that eventually, even without the use of force, someone will break the encryption and everyone will be in the same hole. To think that there are not hacker groups out there already trying would be complete ignorance to the times we currently live in.
This is not a situation where the FBI would go into a bank and ask for John Smith’s bank records and transactions. It’s more like the FBI is going into a bank and asking for the vault combinations and username/passwords to the accounting software. Just as the bank would not hand over that information, Apple is fighting to not hand over the “keys” to their phones.
