The Apple/FBI passcode thing

[Dreamstalker]

No one there is taking the side of the government, except for one or two of the "Government is always right" types.

Heh, you just described the argument in our household. Mom is one of those "government is always right" types (oddly only for electronic privacy matters, she says she can see both sides, but can't convincingly explain Apple's view) and she's been bringing up "if everyone's screaming about privacy why do they put everything on Facebook etc" argument.

[Hyena Dandy]

Yes that was the article. Thanks

That article is assuming that this is something it isn't. Tim Cook didn't say "We will never take things off iPhones." He said "We will never develop this type of program, specifically, to take things off iPhones." The 'Unprecedented step' is not opening the phone.

[Dreamstalker]

According to dad, there "must be a way" to get the device encryption key. If so, wouldn't someone have cracked it already?

[Gravekeeper]

Oh for fuck sakes:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkows...cust#.hf8pQ00z

>.>

[Hyena Dandy]

So if the county reset the password, why can they not access the phone?

I'm confused by that. Not challenging anything, just trying to figure out what I missed.

[Dreamstalker]

This may be relevant; a tale of how Apple's password-reset policies led to a hack. (wired wants you to disable adblockers to read it).

My understanding of the current situation is that the only password that was reset was the cloud password, which prevents further backups from occurring until the phone is resynced.

The EFF lays out the case's technical aspects.

[HYHYBT]

So if the county reset the password, why can they not access the phone?

The phone doesn't know the new iCloud password, so it cannot run a backup. Nobody can tell the phone the new password until they've unlocked it, which requires knowing the passcode it was locked with.

What gets me is that it seems like the people who say Apple should give the government anything it asks for are the same ones who say they need lots of guns to defend themselves against that same government.

[Gravekeeper]

Soooo....the DoJ has added 12 more phones to the list it wants Apple to crack under the All Writs Act. None of which have anything to do with terrorism cases.

They couldn't even maintain that "We're just gonna use it this one time on this one phone, honest" bullshit long enough for the first legal case to settle.