FBI vs Apple

The FBI selected the San Bernardino shooting as a "poster child" for their cause to open up encrypted phones to Government snooping.  FBI for the past year has been complaining about the need for access to encrypted phones.  This situation looked like the perfect Trojan Horse for them to use the horrible nature of the crime as leverage to build public consensus to force companies to provide the Government a back door to our phones.

Other than the horror of the shootings, there is probably little merit to getting into the phones.  The two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, are dead, and they made sure that their personal phones were totally destroyed.  That certainly makes it appear that those phones were probably the location of any information that might incriminate others.  This phone is a county government phone.

Also, in this case, the Government made two serious mistakes.  First, San Bernardino County should have paid the small additional amount for the Apple-provided service that would allow the County to always be able to track and open the employee's phone.  Second, the Government shouldn't have changed the iphone cloud password (see this Wired link).  That made it impossible with the current technology to get into the phone in question.  So, the Government made 2 serious mistakes, and now wants to put all phone owners at risk to be able to get into that phone and possibly find that there might have been someone else partially involved with the crime.

Of course, the FBI knows that as soon as Apple would create the capability to break into this phone, they would be following up with hundreds of more requests.  Other US police agencies would also want to get into our phones.  Every country where Apple sells it's phones (probably all countries) would also demand the same capability or they would "ban" apple from selling in their country.  Apple, of course, would have to comply.  From then on, nobody who travels to those countries would be safe from foreign government snooping through their phones. Worldwide privacy would be gone!

Why the Fight over Encryption is at an Impasse

MIT's Technology Review had a good article by Tom Simonite that summarizes the standoff between the Government agencies and technology companies over encryption of communication and files.  See this article.

The Government agencies claim that they need to be able to decrypt and monitor all of our phone calls, emails, texts, and computer files in order to "fight terrorism."  The privacy advocates, and technology companies say that if our Government is given a "backdoor" into all communication encryption, other governments will ask for the same thing.  Also then there would be nothing to stop "bad actors" from either stealing, or figuring out that same back door, and be able to interfere with all of our personal communications, banking, trade secrets etc.  

Tom Simonite implies that he thinks that the issue will not be decided until we have a new president in office.  He believes that Trump and Rubio would side with the Government, while Cruz and Sanders would side with the tech/privacy advocates.  Hillary Clinton has a vague "in between" stance. 

The Government agencies claim that if they had access to encrypted messages, calls, and files, they could prevent acts of terrorism.  They say they are still having difficulty opening files related to the San Bernardino shootings.  I'm very skeptical that they will be able to identify and prevent acts of terrorism before they occur.  However I can see that it is useful after the fact to use when prosecuting criminals.  The problem is to identify conversations related to planning a crime and separating it from all of the other general noise in the system.

I believe everyone should have access to the toughest encryption possible for our calls, texts, emails and computer & cloud files.   

California Considering Requiring all Cell Phones to have "back door" to encryption.

Sunday 24 Jan 2016 Los Angeles Times had a report by Melanie Mason that said:  "Lawmaker targets smartphone encryption."  Assemblyman Jim Cooper of Elk Grove is sponsoring a bill  (AB1681)to require all cell phones produced in the state to have an ability to be decrypted using a "back door" by police agencies.  The bill also requires smartphones sold to be able to be remotely disabled.
Assemblyman Jim Cooper is a retired Captain in the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, and states this capability is necessary to stop human trafficking.  Yes, I think it might help the police stop human trafficking.  I suspect their real reason is to use it in  their terribly frustrating "war on drugs."  He is probably using the human trafficking example as a Trojan horse to get such a bill passed, since most people would be against human trafficking, but probably less than half of the voting population is in favor of continuing the war on drugs.  We really cannot trust our prosecutors and police to not "stretch" the use of this "crime fighting tool if they got it.  They would eventually use it to become a serious abuse of powers.  Every time they have been granted an additional power, they have abused it, such as the RICO laws, property confiscation,  and the "3 Strikes" law.  The requirement in this law to be able to remotely disable a smartphone is described as disabling it for "unauthorized users" -- but that also implies that the police could disable the phone to prevent someone from erasing incriminating information on it.

It is also very strange that a Democrat would be sponsoring a bill to tear down our individual rights -- that is usually what Republicans advocate.  Cooper also claims that the big tech companies are putting profits over people by fighting such a proposal.  I would put it the other way -- his bill puts the profits of the immense "police/counter drug" industry over the rights of individuals.

Samantha Corbin, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, disagrees.  I also disagree with the proposal.  We need to draw a line in the sand for our individual rights for privacy.  It is a difficult area to figure out where to draw that line -- but this is one of them.  There are a lot of flaws in the proposal:
1. If police do have a court order to be permitted to explore the contents of a cell phone, then there are computer resources that must be available to help them do it by "brute force" decryption.  Yes, the police department may have to pay either private companies, or NSA to perform the task.  Criminals using mobile phones have to use some sort of password, and it is possible to crack fairly long passwords within 24 hours or processing using modern computers and algorithms.
2. If a back door is put into encryption of all mobile phones sold in California, anyone with criminal intent will buy their cell phones from out of the state -- or out of the country if all states passed similar laws.
3. If such a law was passed, that same "back door" could be used by others.  What is to stop political opponents from using it to spy on competitors?  What happens when the "back door" is discovered by someone and made public on the internet?  
4. Third-party applications could be installed on phones that would add another layer of encryption on top of the manufacturer's encryption.  If such a bill passed, most of us, and certainly most criminals would begin using such applications.  Yes, it would encumber the use of the phones, but the cost would be reasonable compared to the risks involved.

The right answer is to pass a law that requires an owner of a mobile phone to unlock a phone when presented with a legal search warrant with probable cause.  The owner should be entitled to at least one appeal, where counter argument could be presented before having to unlock the device.  The search warrant should be written to only look for certain information, and not be permitted access to everything on the phone.  If the owner of the device refuses to unlock the phone, there should be some sort of immediate jail sentence (if nothing else but "contempt of court")  and the owner should be fined and required to reimburse the cost expended to "crack" the encryption using high-powered computers and algorithms.

Intelligence goldmine

Phil Zimmerman, founder of PGP, points out that the international intelligence agencies are complaining about encrypted losing access to encrypted communication while they are wallowing in more information about citizens than they have ever had before.  
PGP creator Phil Zimmermann: 'Intelligence agencies have never had it so good' http://gu.com/p/45dcn

Do they really need to listen to the contents of all of our phone calls and emails when they now have so much other information?