Encryption

With Apple making very clear how strongly it feels about the privacy of customer data through the FBI case, it’s no surprise that the issue is a hot-button within the company. A Reuters piece shows just how serious Apple is when it comes to guarding personal data.

Any collection of Apple customer data requires sign-off from a committee of three “privacy czars” and a top executive, according to four former employees who worked on a variety of products that went through privacy vetting […] The trio of experts […] are both admired and feared.

One former employee said that debates over whether or not customer data can be used to improve a service usually take at least a month to settle, and some privacy issues are debated for more than a year before a final decision is reached. Key privacy issues are escalated all the way to Tim Cook.

It was a refusal to compromise on privacy that killed one of Apple’s products, says the piece, while others needed to be substantially reworked to achieve privacy sign-off …

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Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found a vulnerability in iMessages that allowed them to decrypt both photos and videos sent via the service. Apple said that iOS 9 provided a partial fix – making the attack method more difficult – while it is fully fixed in iOS 9.3.

The Washington Post reports that the team advised Apple of the flaw, and will publish a paper as soon as iOS 9.3 has been officially released, expected for later today. The team has, however, explained in outline how their attack worked …

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A detailed behind-the-scenes look by Bloomberg at the showdown between Apple and the FBI details how it had been on the cards for years before the San Bernardino shootings. Among the details revealed are that Apple provided the FBI with early access to iOS 8 so that the agency could understand the impacts ahead of its introduction.

The government’s concern about Apple’s increasing use of strong encryption dates back to 2010, said one source.

Long before iOS 8 was launched, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had fretted about Apple’s encryption, according to a person familiar with the matter. In 2010, the company introduced the video-calling app FaceTime. It encrypted conversations between users. The following year, the iMessage texting application arrived; it, too, featured encryption. While neither of these developments caused a public stir, the U.S. government was now aware how much of a premium Apple put on privacy.

It was around this time, says the piece, that the FBI started pushing the White House to introduce new legislation which would guarantee law enforcement access to data on smartphones and other devices. These attempts were reportedly abandoned when the Snowden revelations changed the public mood …

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In the ongoing controversy over Apple’s refusal of the FBI’s request to assist in unlocking the iPhone of the San Bernardino gunman, The New York Times reports Apple engineers could refuse the work necessary even if Apple as a company decides to cooperate with authorities.

Citing “more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees,” the report claims there is already an internal discussion over engineers possibly refusing to do the necessary work or even quitting:

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ProtonMail has announced the official launch of their mobile apps for iOS and Android today. ProtonMail brings seamless PGP end-to-end encryption to emailing, making it significantly more secure for those looking for an extra layer of privacy.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has gotten his first solo appearance on the cover of TIME magazine today, with the publication printing a lengthy interview with Cook about Apple’s fight with the FBI over iPhone encryption backdoors. The full transcript of the interview is available on TIME’s website.

Cook says he is uncomfortable fighting the government, but Apple is fighting willingly for what it believes are civil liberties. Although interesting, the piece largely repeats the same arguments Apple has been touting for the last few weeks on the right to privacy, freedom of speech in iOS code and more.

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Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford and former special assistant to President Obama has written a blog post setting out the reason why she believes it is legally impossible for the FBI to win its case. The piece is entitled ‘The Law is Clear: The FBI Cannot Make Apple Rewrite its OS.’

While the FBI is relying on an extremely broad interpretation of the All Writs Act, Crawford points out that it is an accepted principle that specific laws take precedence over more general ones – and there is a specific law which outlaws what the FBI is asking for …

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Fight for the Future, the protest group that organized demonstrations in support of Apple outside its retail stores, plans to hold a demonstration outside the next Apple/FBI court hearing on March 22nd. Re/code reports that the group has created a website inviting people to voice their support for secure iPhones, comments from which will be displayed outside the U.S. District Courthouse in Riverside, California.

The FBI wants to force Apple to weaken the security measures that keep all of us safe. This is misguided, and dangerous. On March 22, when Apple goes to court, we’ll display thousands of statements from Internet users outside the courthouse.

Fight for the Future has so far had mixed success with its protests …

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The Apple/FBI iPhone encryption backdoor debate continues to ramp up, with an FBI filing late last week causing Apple SVP Bruce Sewell to describe the case as a smear campaign against the company. Apple and the FBI take the battle to the courts officially on March 22nd, the day after Apple’s spring media event.

Although the topic at hand is clearly important, where the government is asking Apple to make software to undermine the security of iPhones, the bureaucracy of court proceedings can make the (continuing) story pretty stale and laborious. In a Last Week Tonight segment, comedian Jon Oliver humorously presents the opposing arguments without losing the underlying factual basis.

Watch the video after the break …

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The latest to speak out on the Apple and FBI controversy is none other than President Obama who earlier today attended a talk at South by Southwest Interactive. While the talk was about “civic engagement in the 21st Century,” the conversation not surprisingly turned to the government’s role in the high-profile Apple and FBI case.

Obama made it clear that he isn’t behind Apple in the case, saying that tech companies shouldn’t “take an absolutist view” on encryption and encouraging them to make concessions instead of forcing Congress to pass new law:

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Will Apple stick to business as usual later this month at its press event for the new iPhone SE, Apple Watch, and Mac updates? Or will it use the very public stage to also address the ongoing FBI/San Bernardino/encryption controversy?

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We said yesterday that the war of words on the Apple/FBI dispute were hotting up, and Edward Snowden has now taken things a step further, suggesting that the FBI’s claims that they need Apple to access the iPhone are … not true. His comments were reported by The Intercept, which posted video of the discussion at a civil liberties conference.

“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’” to unlock the phone, Snowden said during a discussion at Common Cause’s Blueprint for Democracy conference.

“Respectfully, that’s bullsh*t,” he said, over a video link from Moscow.

Snowden had earlier described how the FBI could physically extract the passcode from the iPhone chip, and has now linked to an explanation of how the agency could bypass the auto-erase feature …

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While an earlier public poll showed the majority of the public siding with the FBI in the dispute over whether Apple should be forced to help the government break into an iPhone, the public mood appears to be shifting. A WSJ/NBC poll shows that, overall, American voters are now almost evenly split on the issue.

Neither the WSJ nor NBC has yet released the full poll – only the results relating to the Republican primary race – but CNET has reported the numbers.

Overall, American voters are evenly divided over whether Apple should cooperate with FBI efforts to crack open a terrorist’s iPhone.

47 percent said they feared the government wouldn’t go far enough in protecting national security, while 44 percent feared it would intrude too far into citizens’ privacy.

As you’d expect, there was a significant difference in views among registered Republicans and Democrats …

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As Apple continues to fight a court order asking it to unlock the iPhone of one the San Bernardino gunmen, the company is also involved in a similar case in New York. Last week, a New York judge ruled that the government couldn’t force Apple to unlock a device, but now, Reuters reports that the Department of Justice is fighting the ruling and is again citing the All Writs Act as reasoning.

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The implications of the FBI forcing Apple to create a compromised version of iOS to break into an iPhone could be profound, argues Lavabit – an encrypted email company that closed its service rather than comply with an FBI demand to hand over its encryption key. Company founder Ladar Levison (above) was found to be in contempt of court when he refused to hand over the key in 2013.

Lavabit is the latest of more than 40 companies and organizations to file an amicus brief in support of Apple, reports TechCrunch.

It warns that iPhone and iPad users may reject future iOS updates, which would leave security holes unplugged.

If the government is successful, however, many consumers may not be as trustful of these updates because of a fear (actual or imagined) that the updates will contain malware to provide a backdoor into the data on their iPhones. The result is that fewer people will automatically accept the automatic updates and the overall security of iPhones across the country will suffer.

But the effects of a ruling against Apple could go even further, the company suggests …

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The battle between the FBI and Apple continues to be played out in the media. On the same day that Apple SVP Craig Federighi said that the FBI wanted to create a weakness that could be used by hackers and criminals, NYPD’s head of counter-terrorism weighed in during a radio interview. The Daily News quotes John Miller accusing Apple of providing aid to murderers, among other things.

I still don’t know what made [Apple] change their minds and decide to actually design a system that made them not able to aid the police. You are actually providing aid to the kidnappers, robbers and murderers.

He cited the same quote used by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance during the Congressional hearing to support this contention, that a criminal described iOS 8 as ‘a gift from God’ …

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Update #2: A second coalition of tech companies including Google, Microsoft Facebook, Snapchat, Mozilla, and Dropbox have also filed a joint brief this evening in support of Apple. These companies also argue that the All Writs Act does not give the government legal basis for forcing Apple to unlock the gunman’s iPhone (via Reuters). Google detailed its reasoning in a blog post:

Today, Google joined a variety of technology companies to file an amicus brief in US federal court. Together, we are voicing concern about the use of a broad statute from the 18th century, the All Writs Act, to require companies to re-engineer important security features that protect people and their data.

Update: 5 families of the San Bernardino victims have filed an amicus brief with the court asking for Apple to unlock the iPhone in question. More below.

On a new webpage dedicated to highlighting companies and organizations supporting it in its fight against the FBI, Apple today has shared a joint amicus brief from a variety of tech companies that has been filed with the court. Twitter, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Square, Reddit, and many others have signed the brief expressing support for Apple.

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Bloomberg hosted a lengthy interview with Apple head lawyer Theodore Olson, to discuss the ongoing FBI vs Apple case in light of the congressional hearing from yesterday. Bloomberg’s Emily Chang quizzes Olson on various aspects of the case and although much of what is said is merely a repeat of what Tim Cook and other Apple representatives have said before, there are a few new tidbits. Olson says there isn’t a middle ground he can foresee between Apple’s staunch privacy position and the data collection wishes of the FBI. Olson was last quoted saying that if the FBI got their way, it would lead to an Orwellian society.

Watch the full fifteen-minute interview below …

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There were a few face-palm moments in yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, from committee members who appeared not to know what encryption is to Apple’s lead lawyer Bruce Sewell having to make a hasty switch from his iPad Pro to paper when the device apparently failed. (Some suggested it may simply have timed-out and auto-locked, but it’s unclear why he wouldn’t use Touch ID to let himself back in.)

Overall, though, it was a serious discussion of the issue, with each side making its points in a calm, rational manner and being subjected to many probing and intelligent questions.

It wasn’t a one-sided battle by any means. FBI Director James Comey made some solid arguments that clearly hit home. But my view is that Apple not only won on points, but also scored the knock-out blow …

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Shortly after yesterday’s Congressional hearing, Apple filed a formal objection to the court order instructing it to assist the FBI in breaking into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

Apple had previously filed its mandatory response, in which it called for the court to vacate the order. This was a 65-page detailed document setting out the reasons the company believed the order should not have been granted. The document filed yesterday was rather shorter …

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