Appleinsider:
Microsoft has demonstrated why the FBI’s desire for “Golden Key” backdoors allowing “good guys” to bypass security is such a bad idea: it inadvertently released its own keys to Windows tablets, phones, HoloLens and other devices using UEFI Secure Boot.
This story is less about Microsoft screwing up (but, to be clear, they absolutely did) and more about how it vindicates Apple’s stance regarding backdoors.
Everybody keeps going on about backdoors. But what the FBI wanted was not a backdoor.
“We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that.”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/we-could-not-look-survivors-eye-if-we-did-not-follow-lead
Of course, Tech Crunch then argued that “one-off access is tantamount to access at any time.” And certainly it has that risk.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/21/fbi-director-denies-wanting-to-create-a-backdoor-into-the-iphone/
But that argument seems to be a paper tiger. Speaking in front of a House judiciary meeting, he said, “The danger is, if we try to guess the passcode, beyond the tenth guess, the phone may well auto-encrypt permanently — essentially erase itself. And even if that feature went away, guessing would take us decades, because the phone is designed to have each guess require a longer period of time, as you wait to make the next guess. … So we went to court … and requested a court order that would direct Apple to do a couple things — two things. Shut off that auto-encrypt feature on the phone, and shut off the feature that delays successively longer periods after each unsuccessful guess. … The phone could stay in Apple’s possession, and the software they wrote could stay in Apple’s possession.”
http://www.informationweek.com/government/mobile-and-wireless/apple-vs-fbi-5-key-quotes-from-james-comeys-speech/a/d-id/1325052
If Apple had complied with the request, the product would not have been a backdoor. It would have been a custom OS, which the phone would have updated itself with. And Apple could have been allowed to keep possession of that phone afterward, to prevent someone from getting all nefarious and reverse engineering things.
And he’s been much, much more fair-minded than than his opposition. He’s said that the legal arguments Apple has used were the same he’d have used but he disagreed with them. He pointed out that we have “awesome new technology that creates a serious tension between two values we all treasure – privacy and safety.” Adding “That tension should not be resolved by corporations that sell stuff for a living. It also should not be resolved by the FBI, which investigates for a living. It should be resolved by the American people deciding how we want to govern ourselves in a world we have never seen before.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/02/22/fbi-james-comey-vs-apple-iphones/#6c8861ab27e8
It should not have been resolved like this though. Backdoors are a bad idea. The FBI was asking for something else. You can disagree with it. But jeez… at least try to be honest about what the FBI was trying to force from Apple.
The government—ANY government—needs to simply get the hell out of our lives. The concept of “enforcing” or “legislating” people to be “good” is futility itself. But that also doesn’t mean that man is inherently “bad.” Quite the contrary. He has been forced, propagandized, brainwashed, coerced, threatened, bullied into simply being STUPID—ignorant of his true nature. The solution is EDUCATION, a task sorely MIS-done by our various educational systems and even churches.
Apple is steadfastly offering its customers “privacy” with respect to is computing devices. It’s leaving the rest up to us. Law enforcement can bloody well find other means to detect crime.
You are right, please explain the difference between a backdoor, and essentially removing the security from a phone that keeps it from being unlocked easily by the government so said government could send as many warrants as they desired to compel Apple to make it easy to unlock phones for as many warrants as the government feels it wants to send. And of course if Apple does this one thing for the good ‘ol US of A, what’s to stop them from complying with the same requests from other governments all around the world? But you are right, it’s not a backdoor. What would you call it if you were explaining it to the American People?
it’s a backdoor.
More like a front door…
You’re right, that’s more of a front door.
That’s the point. Microsoft created a way that devices could be brought to them and unlocked.
That way leaked and now what wasn’t a backdoor is one, and it’s nicer than the front.
That is probably the longest thing I’ve ever read that says, basically, “You say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to.”
Who are you and what have you done with Daniel? 😉
It’s nice to see Microsoft continuing its decades-long tradition of demonstrating worst-case practices for potentially vital services.