Thread: Apple Is Right: The FBI Wants to Break Into Lots of Phones

Apple Is Right: The FBI Wants to Break Into Lots of Phones

• After Apple’s lawyers revealed that the agency is trying to gain access to about a dozen devices, it’s becoming increasingly clear why the government chose to take the San Bernardino case public.

KAVEH WADDELL

FEB 23, 2016



James Comey, the director of the FBI, has insisted that his agency’s ongoing conflict with Apple over a terrorist’s phone is just that: a conflict over one phone. In a letter posted to the Lawfare blog over the weekend, Comey called the legal issue at hand “quite narrow,” and said the FBI sought only “limited” help.Experts say the small scope of the FBI’s ask bolsters its case.

But in fact, the iPhone 5c that belonged to Syed Farook—one of the perpetrators of December’s mass shooting in San Bernadino, California—is only one of at least a dozen of Apple devices the FBI is seeking to access, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.

In a letter addressed to a federal judge in New York, a lawyer for Apple said that federal law enforcement has recently requested that the company access information on 12 other iOS devices. The list is likely not a complete tally of the FBI’s requests, and does not include similar requests from state or local police.

The letter was sent last week, just one day after a federal judge in California asked Apple to help the FBI unlock Farook’s iPhone. It was filed under seal but was released on Tuesday.

The letter was submitted to a federal court in Brooklyn, where Apple and the FBI are facing off in a less dramatic version of the San Bernardino legal fight. In the Brooklyn case, the FBI is asking Apple to extract data from a locked iPhone with an outdated operating system. In San Bernardino, the FBI is asking Apple to modify the software in a newer iPhone in order to make it easier for agents to try to break in. Apple can technically fulfill both requests, but it has chosen to oppose them.

All 12 requests outlined in the letter were made under the All Writs Act, a 1789 law which has been used to compel a landline phone service provider to help the FBI conduct phone taps. But the judge in the Brooklyn case has expressed doubtthat the same law would apply to locked iPhones.

The Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. says he’s asked Apple to unlock a whopping 175 iPhones. Here’s why this all matters: These 12 pending requests—and probably many more that didn’t make the list—are a logjam waiting to break. If the federal judge in the San Bernardino case sides with the FBI, it would be much easier for the judges overseeing these other, similar cases to compel Apple to comply.

Apple maintains that this case is not, in fact, about just one phone; it’s about precedent. And if it can show that the government is using the San Bernardino case as a way to break through at least a dozen stalled cases elsewhere (even as the FBI claims that it’s not interested in setting a precedent), the judge might think twice before granting the FBI’s wishes.

Meanwhile, there are a whole lot more devices waiting in the wings, in the hands of state and local law enforcement. The Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. says he’s asked Apple to unlock a whopping 175 iPhones. If the government wins in San Bernardino, Vance told PBS’s Charlie Rose recently, he would “absolutely” try to get Apple to help get data off those devices, too.
It’s likely the government chose to take the San Bernardino case public, instead of one of the other pending cases, because it can make a very strong argument for needing to get into a terrorist’s iPhone. Comey wrote compellingly in his recent open letter that the FBI is duty-bound to pursue every lead in a national-security investigation. Here, Apple is forced to take a position that obstructs a crucial-seeming probe, in contrast to the other cases, which did not involve terrorism charges, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The FBI may be winning the public-relations battle it’s fighting with Apple alongside the ongoing legal conflicts. According to a poll that Pew Research conducted over the weekend, most Americans think Apple should honor the FBI’s request to unlock Farook’s iPhone. But now, Apple has a new arrow in its quiver: It can show that helping the FBI in California will have far-reaching consequences.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...phones/470607/

FBI accused of emotional manipulation in Apple encryption case
7

Francis Rivera

By Katie Bo Williams - 02/25/16 06:00 AM EST

The FBI is facing claims it deliberately selected the emotionally charged case of the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone to force a precedent on encryption policy.

“I think the FBI is being very selective here, and it has much more to do with the emotional value and public relations value of the case than it does with the FBI’s real need for the phone,” former White House counterterrorism and cybersecurity chief Richard Clarke told The Hill.

Led by Director James Comey, the FBI has for months advocated different avenues for law enforcement to access locked communications with the appropriate court order. Technologists and privacy advocates have pushed back, insisting that impenetrable encryption is indispensable to online security and privacy.

The latest salvo in an increasingly bitter fight came last week, when the agency asked federal judge Sheri Pym to issue a court order demanding Apple write a piece of software to disable certain security features on San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s county-owned work phone.

Farook, with wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 in the December massacre.

Critics are suggesting the FBI’s choice was calculated. By pressing forward in a case with optics that seem cut and dry, they say, the agency could set a precedent that gives it the controversial guaranteed access Comey has been demanding.
"It’s a brilliant tactic,” said Chris Finan, a former Obama administration cybersecurity adviser who now heads California-based financial tech firm Manifold Technology. “They realize the public is going to be on their side.”

Apple is opposing the order, arguing the FBI’s demand sets “a dangerous precedent” that would eventually let the agency demand Apple build surveillance software to do everything from track a user’s location to turn on his or her iPhone microphone without consent.

Comey has argued fiercely that the case impacts only Farook’s phone, but such claims appeared tenuous when it was revealed Tuesday that the Justice Department is pursuing about a dozen undisclosed court orders to force Apple to help authorities access locked iPhones.

“Give me a break. Of course it has precedential value,” Clarke said.

“Absolutely it sets a precedent,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a staunch Capitol Hill advocate for digital rights, said Tuesday.
Bolstering suppositions that the FBI’s choice was tactical are the deeply emotional terms it is using to appeal to the public.
“The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice,” Comey wrote in an impassioned op-ed published Sunday. “We owe them a thorough and professional investigation under law.”

Critics aren’t buying it — not the agency’s insistence that the legal case is “narrow,” nor its decision to “drape itself in the flag of national security,” as one attorney described the FBI’s portrayal of the case.

In what is now being portrayed as a premeditated move, the agency asked a lawyer representing victims of the attack to support its case two days before it asked Pym to issue the order, according to reports that surfaced Tuesday.

Former federal judge Stephen Larson has told several publications that Eileen Decker, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, asked him personally if he was interested in representing the victims.

Then, according to The Guardian, on Feb. 14, Decker asked Larson to file a brief supporting the government position on behalf of the victims. Larson agreed, and Decker requested and received the Apple court order from Pym two days later.
There is also the question of the value of Farook’s phone. Two other phones used by the terrorists were destroyed before the attack. Farook left the disputed device, his work phone, lying casually in his vehicle.

“The possibility that there’s any information on this phone about an imminent attack is negligible or zero,” Clarke said.
Clarke also noted that the impending court battle — which could eventually go to the Supreme Court — suggests the FBI isn’t too concerned with the contents of this particular device.

“I think that in some way demonstrates there’s no urgency here on the part of the FBI. They don’t really need this phone,” he said.

Even Comey has allowed that the phone might be, in fact, worthless.

“Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t,” he wrote Sunday. “But we can't look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don't follow this lead.”

Some lawmakers have come to the agency’s defense.

Asked if the agency had singled out the San Bernardino case because it was so emotionally charged, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) responded quickly and emphatically: “No. No. No.”

“Any murder is emotionally charged,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “I am all but certain that the Justice Department would not do this — I think they legitimately need the help.”

Whether the Justice Department is winning the fight for public opinion remains to be seen. Two polls on the issue returned dramatically different results, depending on the wording of the question.

And observers say that even if the FBI’s choice to stoke a public fight over this particular phone was strategic, it doesn’t change the technical facts of the case.

“They’ve got all the optics, but I think the government’s attempt to contextualize it and make an emotional appeal — that’s all good press, but I don’t think that changes what’s at issue and what’s at stake,” said Scott Vernick, a partner at Fox Rothschild.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecur...ncryption-case

If the government can show a warrant, they should be able to do this, just like they can enter a home with a warrant. The constitution is pretty clear on this kind of thing.

There all kinds of things flying around about this. I have heard some say that the government has the ability to crack the phone, but they want a precedent set for future use. This all makes no sense to me since the phone was the property of the County which is more than wiling to have it "cracked"..