*The crypto war not working out too great for the feds this week, but of course they'll be back, just like IP guys always return after a reverse. Presumably they'll pick on somebody with a less mulish user-base than Apple. But they've gotta have those back-door keys, or else they might as well declare themselves in the same neutered position as, say, the Lithuanian Bureau of Investigation.
*This is just one battle in a war, and not a well-chosen terrain. My own suspicion is that crypto "wins," but it wins in the same manner that, say, Bitcoin wins, which is to say that nobody genuinely benefits – a kind of "Crypto-Chernobyl" scenario, where one find out that the wicked secondary and tertiary legal social and ethnical effects, which engineers and zealots always preferred to ignore, dominate over the nice clean electro-version of crypto-too-cheap-to-meter.
*The following is a press release from activists.
*There are also some pro-FBI activists around who would like to see Apple get a walloping, but this week they're pretty inert, as it's dawned on them that they've been laboring to hand to keys to the homeland-kingdom to Donald Trump.
********************************************
From: fightforthefuture.org
"Hey, I wanted to tip you off on this.
"The FBI probably lied this week when they said they just discovered a way to hack the San Bernardino iPhone without Apple's help.
"Several outlets are reporting
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrite-idUSKCN0WP17J
"that the “3rd party” who supposedly just approached the FBI offering to help hack the iPhone at the center of the Apple vs FBI case is Israeli security firm Cellebrite.
"The DOJ publicly claimed at least 19 times
https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/03/22/dojs-pre-ass-handing-capitulation/
"that there was no other viable method to open Sayed Farook’s iPhone other than with Apple’s help. This was a core tenet of their case using the All Writs Act.
"But surveillance blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that the DOJ was already in talks
https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/03/23/on-february-16-doj-got-a-warrant-to-open-an-iphone-6-using-cellebrite/
"with Cellebrite about hacking an iPhone 6 in a drug case as long ago as February 16th. Cellebrite is a well-known firm used by many law enforcement agencies, and it publicly boasts
http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-israels-cellebrite-could-unlock-the-san-bernadino-iphone/
"on its website about its ability to hack Apple products.
"The DOJ never mentioned Cellebrite as an alternative possibility in its filings with the court. In this case, that omission essentially amounts to lying. They consistently claimed that there was simply no other way to break into the phone without Apple’s help, even though they knew there was another very plausible possibility.
"Even before this latest announcement, multiple expert security researchers have cast serious doubt on the DOJ’s claim that only Apple could help unlock the phone. See this, this, and this.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-iphone-case-fraudulent
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/snowden-fbi-claim-that-only-apple-can-unlock-phone-is-bullshit/
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/how-the-fbi-could-use-acid-and-lasers-to-access-data-stored-on-seized-iphone/
"This seems really worth digging into. It really looks like the FBI is backing down from this fight because they realized they were losing public trust and weren’t going get the precedent they were after. It’s important that the public understand what really happened here.
"Here’s quick quote from us on the matter, which you can attribute to me: “The FBI’s last minute excuse is about as believable as an undergrad who comes down with the flu the night before their paper is due. They should come clean immediately, and admit that they mislead the court and the public, to avoid further damaging what’s left of their credibility.”
"Feel free to reach out if you’d like to chat about this.
"Thanks, -Evan Greer
Campaign Director
Fight for the Future 978-852-6457
"P.S. Our latest press release on our campaign around the Apple case is here."
http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/141500788643/photos-fbi-reverses-course-in-fight-with-apple-as
