As Apple’s battle with the FBI drags on, the company’s senior vice president of software and services Eddy Cue has sat down with Univision to discuss the case. In the interview, Cue echoes much of what his colleagues have said before regarding the case, including that it should be decided in Congress and several other points.
The interview, done in Spanish, is relatively extensive and covers a lot of ground on Apple’s reasoning for denying to unlock the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino gunmen. Cue explains that Apple has always helped the FBI and police when it can, but that this request is asking the company to give away something that it simply can not give. He likens the FBI’s request to the idea of you giving someone a key to the back door of your home (translated):
First, we help the police and the FBI in this case and many more cases. We give all the data we have. In this case, the problem is that they want to give the one thing that we do not, that we can not give.
What they want is you to give a key to the back door of your house and you do not have the key. Since you don’t have the key, they want to change the lock. When we change the latchkey, it changes for everyone. And we have a key that opens all phones. And that key, once it exists, exists not only for us. Terrorists, criminals, pirates, all too will find that key to open all phones
When asked about what he would say to the victims of the attack in San Bernardino, Cue expressed that he was nothing but condolences for the families and that is why this case is so important to Apple. The Apple executive explained that not giving the government the key to the phone is the best way to protect everyone’s safety. Cue also noted that the government is notorious for losing critical information of citizens:
How you can talk to a family member who has lost someone in a terrorist case?… My heart aches, just thinking if [that happened to] me or someone in my family. I am very, very sorry, it should not happen to anyone in the world. And that is why it is so important in this case that we do the best we can do for the safety of everyone. If we do not protect the phone, we will make a much, much worse.
In recent years, the government has lost more than five million fingerprints, employees of government itself. They have lost hundreds of millions of credit numbers, financial systems.This problem is happening more and more and more. And the only way we can protect ourselves is to make the phone more safe.
When asked if Apple was working to make its phones even harder to crack now, Cue explained that it’s something Apple’s engineers are always working on, while noting that in no way should the general public view this case as Apple engineers versus the FBI or the government. Cue iterated that Apple’s goal is to protect everyone from threats from criminals and other dangerous people:
It’s Apple engineers against terrorists, against criminals. They are the people we are trying to protect people from. We are not protecting the government. We want to help. They have a very difficult job, they are there to protect us . So we want to help as much as possible, but we can not help them in a way that will help more criminals, terrorists, pirates.
We are always thinking about how we can do it safer. It is very important to always move forward from where there are terrorists, where criminals are.
The full interview can be read on Univision’s website.
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This is the first time I’ve seen Eddy Cue speak Spanish. As a Spanish-speaker, watching that video clip was very refreshing.
I’m glad Apple are shifting the focus of the argument away from “privacy” and on to “security”.
If someone has full access to everything on my phone I’m not primarily worrying about them looking at my photos, My bigger concern is my identity being stolen, bank emptied, home robbed, car stolen, framed for a crime, contacts attacked etc
Most people seem to forget that the biggest hacks recently like the ones on Sony Pictures and the PlayStation Network were all a result of an administrator’s email account being compromised. Most people don’t realize that just a few minute’s access to someone’s phone and email account (which is also usually on the phone) can basically give them the proverbial keys to kingdom on all their accounts.
Exactly, once someone’s in your email they reset your passwords for everything and they are in!
People’s who lives are on their phones!!! Maybe you have a few nudes of your wife or Girlfriend on your phone. You may have your banking stuff on your phone. Apple Pay is on your phone. Passcodes on your phone. You’re phone is used to recover passcodes at other sites as validation. Your phone can be used to open your Garage (Mine does, even miles away!) or Unlock your front door. You have your Health Data on your phone. GPS info on places you’ve gone to. Unlock your car and maybe even start it. Enough info on your phone to steal your Identity!!! When that happens, now they’re getting Credit Cards under you name, and worse and trying to fix that is expensive and really time consuming and your credit is in the crapper!!!!
This is a huge can of worms the FBI and N.Y. and CA. want to open up with Back Doors!!! Now you have the FBI and the Police passing around BackDoor keys!!! Hell the Criminal doesn’t even have to crack the BackDoor, more then likely can just get them. Leaks all over the FBI and Police. Government’s track record alone for Security has been poor.
Look at the uproar of the so called iCloud hack and all the nude Celebrity pictures released out into the public!!! I’m sure though you’d rather have a nude of you released then your Identity stolen!!! I’d rather have neither. Security and Privacy are both Important! This isn’t North Korea that last time I checked!!!
This could be argued.
Apple and the law enforcement both have the same objective – security.
Creating a way in for the goods guys also creates a vulnerability that the bad guys can exploit.
Creating a way in for the good guys opens up a billion devices to attack. This is a huge security risk.
Once law enforcement are in they may collect evidence that can help protect a number of people but in doing so they expose a billion people.
Once Law enforcement are known to have a way in their criminal suspects will likely turn to third party encryption or another device. Now the door is of no value to law enforcement and does nothing to protect anyone it’s just a dangerous vulnerability to the security of a billion devices.
How misleading.
The warrant requires Apple to apply a modified IOS to this one phone then give it back to the FBI who would brute force the PIN.
He states ‘When we change the latchkey, it changes for everyone.’
That is just not true – it is the equivalent of a lock company modifying the lock on one house not every lock on every house.
He makes a series of claims about government can’t keep secrets. Yet the modified IOS would remain with Apple and Apple would control the cryptographic signing which allows the software to be installed on this or any other phone. If Apple is saying they themselves cannot keep crypto keys secure then they need to say that openly – we all have our personal details, bank details, iCloud emails, etc etc secured on Apple’s crypto key(s).
He was making an analogy to a literal door lock.
Once this modified software (signed for one phone exists) it will be hard to keep it to one phone.
1) legal precedent will demand that it be recreated or reused for hundreds of other phones
2) the knowledge of how to do this and the code will be vulnerable to attack and misuse. For example, if this leads to a conviction Apple will be required to explain to the court how to weaken a phone and provide documentation.
3) the modified OS would not remain with Apple, it would travel with the phone to the FBI.
4) once the code is out, our only protection would be Apple’s signing process. This is not magical security, like everything else it’s there to be attacked.
The way modern cryptology works, even Apple do not have the key for your device, that is on your device protected by your passcode. They have a key for the iCloud backup in case you lose your phone. They wish they didn’t have any keys – it scares them. They know they could be the victim of a hack like anyone else. I don’t believe Apple store bank details on iCloud.
You have literally no idea how evidence admission works in criminal cases. Any half-decent defense attorney would require Apple to explain their development and testing of the modified OS, how it works, how they ensured it did not change any existing data on the phone, etc. If this tool is created to gather evidence for criminal cases, it is going to have many more eyes on it than just Apple’s internal security team.
You’re a moron and you are embarrassing yourself. Just quit posting.
The Defense of course would want their own Expert(s) to look at the code!!! The phone is evidence, so it can’t just leave the FBI’s site so Apple can work on it. In this case the FBI wants too weaken the front door security so that THEY can brute force unlock it themselves which means the phone is leaving Apple’s site and going to FBI’s headquarters where they can do the brute forcing of the phone!!! Which means the FBI now has a copy of that modified OS! In fact they can now pass that around to their techs to help find new ways to get around Apple’s security.
I know that this is a bit nit-picky, but the article–both in the body of the piece and the quoted passages–does not distinguish between “can not” and “cannot.” Ordinarily, I would not bother to comment on something like that, but in this context it matters. And as a matter of good journalistic practice, if the quoted speaker made this grammatical error, that should have been noted with “[sic]” following the error.
To say that someone “can not x” is to say that this person has an ability to not-x…implied is that there is the ability to-x. You can take your umbrella or you can not take your umbrella–you are free to do either.
To say that someone cannot do something is to deny that there is the ability (or, if in a moral context, that it is impermissible). But this is exactly what Apple is denying that it can do this and still sustain its commitment to security. We, of course, might challenge this claim. There is no reason to accept the claim blindly. But to say they can not–even if we know what the author intends to say–is to beg the question, to baldly insist that they can x or they can not-x, that they are free to do either. Apple, of course, insists that they cannot do this without violating the commitment they’ve made to their customers. Let’s argue about that (which is healthy and important for the public good that we get it right). But let’s do so with clarity and precision. This can not/cannot error is pretty pedestrian.
Now a substantive point. The lock analogy is perhaps not all that helpful (at least not in translation). What Apple is being asked to do, as I understand it, is to create a signed image that could be flashed to any phone, even if the present intent is only to flash the one phone. And the point here is that once that is created, it must be safe-guarded, it must not get into the hands of others. Who will safe guard that? The government? Their record is abysmal. Apple? So they should carry this burden for the gov? That is basically conscripting them into federal service, to do what the federal governments has so gobsmackingly botched?
The argument that this would set a dangerous precedent seems compelling, but I’m no legal expert. I do know, however, that if Apple has the means to do something (that is, if they were to make this golden key) and the government produces a legal order to use it, is is unlawful for Apple to destroy that means. In other words, once they create it and Vance et al start inundating Apple with court orders to unlock this phone, then another, and another…at no point will Apple be legally free to destroy that image, effectively saddling them with the job of protecting the government’s interests, which seems an undue burden for a private company–especially since Apple (and Apple’s customers) would suffer most WHEN that image eventually falls into the wrong hands. It will, I think we can all safely agree, eventually fall into the wrong hands.
Encourage all companies to improve security. Please join me in signing the White House #FBIvsApple petition at http://1.usa.gov/1R9A4cM