In an interview on The Late Show, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Stephen Colbert that the government in the San Bernardino case simply wants Apple to help a customer.
What we’re asking [Apple] to do is to do what the customer wants. The real owner of the phone is the County, the employer of one of the terrorists who is now dead.
Lynch otherwise briefly repeats arguments we’ve heard before – that it isn’t a back door, that it doesn’t compromise encryption, that it is just this one iPhone the government wants to access.
While the FBI also began with the ‘one-off deal’ argument, it has since admitted under oath that the case would set a precedent, potentially even allowing foreign governments to demand the same access, so it’s a little surprising to hear this idea still being put forward today.
The argument that the County is the customer, however, would seem a better tack for the government to take.
The brief discussion starts at the 2m 55s mark.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOr5TqTSc6A&feature=youtu.be&t=2m55s
this link goes directly to the start of that portion of the interview
This woman is a partisan hack, just like the person who preceded her.
I agree, they should help the customer. Here’s how. Educate them on how to force a restore on the device and then bypass the activation lock with the newly generated password that the FBI and County changed it to and then restore from the last iCloud backup. That’s helping the customer to get into the device of an forgotten lock screen password. But beyond that, there’s nothing else they should do. They lost out on their best options by not going to Apple in the first place.
except the FBI in their infinite wisdom, forgot the icloud password to which they changed it.
Cannot believe an Attorney General doesn’t understand the full issue here. How ‘these people’ get the positions they’re in is quite baffling.
They are pretending to be dumb and one track mind and sprouting more nonsense to support their case.
Remember judge cote who said Cue was lying and yet didn’t charge him for perjury.
They are acting like the politicians. Simple statements acting so innocent. “Why wouldn’t Apple unlock just this one phone for us?”
As an Apple customer, if I went to Apple and asked them to unlock my iPhone but had previously changed the ID password after having forgotten the unlock code, I very much doubt that they would help me, or indeed would be able to help me. They would doubtless argue that as the customer screwed up any chance of recovering any data, the best that they could do would be to reset the iPhone to it’s factory settings.
Furthermore, I can’t imagine that pursuing the angle that Apple has a duty to the customer would get very far because Apple has already handed over the contents of the last iCloud backup and has therefore not only fully discharged it’s obligation to the customer, but gone beyond those obligations.
Release the San Bernardino surveillance video.
Apple wants to verify the FBI’s story.
Did she just say that BS?
Thats just, wow.
She really can’t be that ignorant.
Is that all she wants? I like how once the public support started drifting away from the Government (something I don’t think they anticipated happening this soon) the story changed to “just help the customer” – The implication being that Apple doesn’t value it’s customer. I wonder how much of our tax dollars are going to meetings to discuss how to smear Apple? More than my liking.
The fact is, Apple has already done way more for this “customer” than I would ever receive as support from Apple, and I have been a customer since 1983.
They do help the customer (San Bernardino Co) by providing multi device management software (MDM) that would give them full access to the device. Unfortunately the county failed to take advantage of this software offering.
Another option for the FBI had they not screwed up with the iCloud password – add another phone on the shooter’s account and set it up from a restore point in the cloud. Did they try this? Nahh because the end game isn’t even about this man’s phone, it’s about halting encryption from going beyond their capabilities of hacking.
Why is our government tying national security to 1 device that belongs to them? If you have one potential peice of evidence that you can’t use, you need to backtrack and start looking at ways the device used to send and receive data. If you think it was involved in communicating with other terrorists, then start investigating how? Viber? Skype? Maybe another third party app?
They are wasting too much time on pinning hopes that the phone that wasn’t destroyed actually has any relevant evidence on it.
Plus they can blame Apple if anything happens that they could have prevented because of time wasted on grandstanding and not used to do their f’in job which is in their name, investigate.
Exactly. Verizon already handed over the logs for all communications with that device (that goes beyond the regular call logs). Plain and simple they want Apple to demonstrate a method so it will be requested in all future cases. And don’t accept their word that this will be the only one. This isn’t the Bush v. Gore case.
They’re not pinning their hopes on gathering any significant evidence from this iPhone. They’re pinning their hopes on exploiting the emotions surrounding this crime to establish a precedent which can then be exploited in the future.
The argument that the county is the customer is actually the best tactic to date as it makes the County the face of the issue rather than the FBI. But clinging to the same argument that this is only a “one-off” situation is just ludicrous at this point as every piece of evidence has pointed to the exact opposite scenario.
Agreed! The customer line is better–but interestingly off-point. There are TWO customers here: the owner of an Apple phone and the owner of an iCloud account. Manifestly these are two separate “things” owned, two different terms of service to agree to.
Try it. Call apple tech support and tell them that you own the phone that your wife/husband uses, and you want to circumvent the security on the device so you can access the data. Here is what they will tell you: with proof of purchase we will remove the activation lock (which the FBI does not need, since they have the current password and can do that from any browser) and you can restore the device to factory, which will erase the device. If you press them to unlock the phone on grounds that you own it and want the data that’s on it, they will refer back to the erase everything method and note that while you are the owner of the hardware, you are not the owner of the data/iCloud account.
Well, the county owns the hardware and Apple can easily assist them in recovering that which they own: the phone. Apple cannot (and should not) assist the owner of a piece of hardware to sieze something that they don’t own, the data. Now, a court order changes that, but the FBI has apparently abandoned that line of argument and wants to try this fruitless approach.
But of course we all know that this isn’t about customer service. The FBI is trying to pull a fast one by pandering to the unreflective public: “if you owned an expensive piece of hardware wouldn’t you want the manufacturer to restore your use of it?” And most people at quick glance will identify with this: “hell yeah, I want to be able to use what I own!”
More over, it is remarkable that the FBI so baldly wants to foist their incompetence on Apple, hoping that the rest of us won’t notice. And frankly, the county is not without blame here…not for changing the password at the FBI’s request (that’s the FBI’s bad) but for not properly managing the device in the first place. As a tax payer, I’d be pretty pissed if they purchased management software to avoid exactly this sort of thing and never bothered to set it up.
If the shooter simply left his job instead of going on some whacked out murderous spree, then the county would have had to call Apple (with original proof of purchase in hand) and then wait weeks to get it unlocked–and they still would have lost all the data. Nice way to use tax dollars, dedicating employee time to fix a problem that would have been avoided had they exercised even a modicum of common sense and managed the device properly with software they paid for, no less. I don’t usually rant about taxes, but come on! That’s a $500 plus phone (when new) that they think their county employees need to be issued (and how many employees have one?), and they made no effort to safeguard it. That’s a lot of cash to be so reckless with once you add up all the unmanaged employees’ devices, and that’s not even counting the cost of the device management software. Stunning. And these are the great minds supposedly keeping Merica safe? Good grief.
legally speaking, the county cannot claim that the phone is theirs and that they are the customer anyway. If this was the case, the phone would have been registered to the company’s enterprise server and ergo for security purposes, entry to the device would not be a problem in the slightest because the enterprise server administrator would be able to reset the pin and other security settings of the phone from his terminal.
since the phone was never registered to the san bernadino county’s enterprise server and incapable of receiving remote updates and policy restrictions by the admins, and since the phone is registered to the shooter’s icloud account, the phone is in fact his, even after his death, and the san bernadino county have no claim whatsoever that could hold up.
This is the same lady who lied on all the Sunday talk shows saying the slaughter of Americans in Benghazi was due to a video that isolated Muslim extremists found offensive. The administration that ignored protecting its own employees, now dead in Libya should be permitted to compel a business to potentially remove further security and privacy in our lives? I would trust the judgement of tech specialists before a fired Hillary Clinton, Lynch who replaced another fired employee in the Obama administration or a government organization that also failed to do their jobs and wants Apple to compromise our privacy and security to make their mistakes easier to correct. The Supreme Court needs to decide this issue, not Cabinet members or elected types who put a political spin on everything.
“Lynch otherwise briefly repeats arguments we’ve heard before – that it isn’t a back door”… “What we’re asking them to do is to help us disable the password erase function, that basically wipes the phone if you guess the password wrong after ten times.”
Hello!?!
So you are not asking for a “backdoor”… It is more like a “front door”!
It would make it even easier for the FBI or anyone else (criminals, terrorists, foreign governments, etc.) to break into ANYONE’S phone using simple “brute force” software. The ability to do that now is not currently built into iOS (the FBI and Apple both cannot break into the phone this way), so it means creating an entirely new version of iOS that DOES allow any hacker to break into any phone.
Either Loretta Lynch is completely unknowledgeable about what she is supposed to know, or she is being blatantly dishonest. Neither of those two options reflect well on her.
Loretta, would you like to carry a phone that had its security removed, and that made it very easy for anyone to steal your identity, financial information, and other personal data???
(I didn’t think so ;-))
‘I’m not the Batman’ ….. but you’ve never seen Loretta Lynch and Batman together in the same room …. just sayin’.
“What we’re asking [Apple] to do is to do what the customer wants.”
First off, you’re not a customer simply because you “salvaged” an iPhone. Second, Apple has amazing customer service, but they don’t always do what the customer wants. Imagine that? Everyone would be getting free screen repairs and replacements. Stupid, in my opinion.
another good point relating to this. If the iPhone really belonged to the county as was suggested by loretta, wouldn’t the county have a mirror of the device, and wouldn’t the device be set up in their name on a business icloud account for security purposes? Any business who buys phones for their employees to be only a part of the job always locks the phone into the enterprise servers, and iPhones are capable of this.
If the answer to these is no, then the county doesn’t own the phone, even if they bought it. if it was registered to the shooter’s icloud, then the phone was gifted to him and became his own property and not the county’s, so no, Apple is not being asked to help the customer here. saying so is deception and entirely untrue.
If the dumbasses at the county had properly set up the device in MDM they would have been able to unlock it AUTOMATICALLY. Full access. Not even a phone call to Apple would have been needed. Since this is only possible for the owner of the phone to do, by setting up that key before handing the phone to their employee, it would meet the platform security needs of Apple and all its consumer users, while also allowing the county or any company the ability to provide police everything they could ever want or need on such a company device.
So this argument goes out the window. Allowing any device to be retroactively unlocked requires a back door to exist for every phone at all times obviously. The back door is the ability to flash the FBI’s hypothetical “E-Z Brute Force” iOS onto any device.