Privacy is a growing concern in today’s world. Follow along with all our coverage related to privacy, security, what Apple and other companies are doing to keep your information safe, and what steps you can take to keep your information private.
Although the battle over encryption between the FBI and Apple has currently subsided, the issue of privacy and security in technology continues. Today, WhatsApp is announcing that all messages, photos, phone calls and videos sent over its messaging app will be encrypted end-to-end. This means that no one can access any communications apart from the people in the conversation. This means if WhatsApp is subpoenaed by government for information, WhatsApp will not be able to help them as it simply cannot help them.
See italicised updates below, with statements from both the Department of Justice and Apple.
The battle between the FBI and Apple over accessing a work phone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists started as headline news and ended in a rather anti-climactic fashion.
The high-profile congressional hearing was due to be followed by a big showdown in court. Instead, the FBI asked that the hearing be vacated, and later quietly announced that it had, with help, managed to gain access to the phone. Nothing to see here, move along.
But while this particular case may be settled, it’s extremely unlikely that this will be the end of the matter – for two reasons …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
While most politicians have come down on the side of the FBI, Bloomberg reports Hillary Clinton is an exception. Not that she’s on Apple’s side: from her remarks, she doesn’t know whose side she’s on, she just wants there to be a solution but has no idea what it should be.
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 …
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’ …
A day after Apple testified before the House Judiciary Committee, a handful of privacy groups have officially filed that they support the company in its fight against the FBI. While the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has previsouly expressed its support for Apple, it today filed an amicus brief with the court, officially acknowledging its stance. Furthermore, three other privacy groups, Access Now, the Wickr Foundation, and a United Nations free speech group have also filed briefs with the court echoing the ACLU’s sentiments.
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 …
FBI director James Comey – who had previously claimed that “the San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent” – has now admitted that it would. The Guardian reports that Comey made the admission when testifying under oath yesterday to a Congress committee.
The ultimate outcome of the Apple-FBI showdown is likely to “guide how other courts handle similar requests”, James Comey told a congressional intelligence panel on Thursday, a softening of his flat insistence on Sunday that the FBI was not attempting to “set a precedent”.
Asked if it was true that police departments around the country also wanted to gain access to locked iPhones, he agreed that it was …
In his security and privacy post regarding iOS’s current music library, Ben Dodson adds a small addendum explaining that with iOS 9.3 apps can now add music that currently exists in the Apple Music catalog directly to a user’s music library. While a small and under-discussed feature, it opens up further possibilities for many different kinds of apps and application developers.
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If Tim Cook’s strongly-worded response to the court order instructing it to assist the FBI in breaking into an iPhone left any room for doubt about Apple’s determination to fight the matter all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, that doubt appears to be removed by further background emerging today.
The NY Times reports that Apple plans to press ahead with plans to increase its use of strong encryption.
Mr. Cook has told colleagues that he still stands by the company’s longstanding plans to encrypt everything stored on Apple’s myriad devices, services and in the cloud, where the bulk of data is still stored unencrypted.
“If you place any value on civil liberties, you don’t do what law enforcement is asking,” Mr. Cook has said.
The piece also reveals that Apple had asked the FBI to make its court application under seal – meaning that the legal arguments could be heard in private – but the FBI chose instead to make it a public fight …
A new We the People petition has been created urging the White House to “halt efforts that compel Apple and other device makers to create a “backdoor” for the Government to access citizens data” (via MacReports).
The petition comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook this week penned an open letter detailing why the company is resisting a demand from the FBI to unlock a device belonging to a suspect in the high profile San Bernardino shooter case.
Discussing the FBI case with a friend yesterday, one distinction that seems worth addressing is the difference between a backdoor into iPhones – which is what law enforcement agencies have so far been calling for – and what we might term a master key, which is what the FBI is calling for in this particular case.
Law enforcement agencies have so far been calling for Apple to abandon its use of strong encryption. Technically, they want Apple to build in a backdoor route into that encryption for use by law enforcement agencies, but that’s the same thing: strong encryption with a built-in flaw is not strong encryption. It’s only a matter of time before hackers find and exploit it.
What the FBI is asking in the San Bernardino case is quite different. Instead of asking Apple to weaken the encryption, they want it to weaken the lock guarding access to the phone by removing the auto-wipe and time-delay functions. That would leave the phone vulnerable to a brute-force attack.
And, the FBI assures us, it isn’t asking Apple to do this for all iPhones, just this one specific device. It’s a very different scenario, and one that sounds superficially harmless …
Civil rights organizations have expressed strong support for Apple’s resistance to a court order instructing it to create special firmware that would allow the FBI to break into an iPhone – with tech companies doing the same, albeit in a weaker fashion.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a statement in which it said that it applauded Apple for standing up for the rights of its customers, and would be making its views known to the court.
Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key so that it can open a single phone. And once that master key is created, we’re certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security […]
EFF applauds Apple for standing up for real security and the rights of its customers. We have been fighting to protect encryption, and stop backdoors, for over 20 years. That’s why EFF plans to file an amicus brief in support of Apple’s position.
The Verge notes similar support from both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International …
News broke yesterday that a United States magistrate judge in California ordered Apple to comply with the FBI’s request for assistance in bypassing the passcode lock of the San Bernardino gunman’s iPhone. Hours later Apple published an open letter by Tim Cook explaining that creating a tool to bypass this specific iPhone would jeopardize the security of all iPhones.
The battle between personal privacy and information gathering as it relates to Apple and security has been building up for years now, and the government narrowing it down to one specific iPhone used by a terrorist in the U.S. has caused the debate to reach new levels. This may be Apple’s battle to lose, but it will be a very public one nonetheless.
Since Apple’s response to the FBI and court order, the White House has stood by the Department of Justice and argued that it’s not about a backdoor for all devices but just a single device, which Tim Cook’s argument already addressed.
Tim Cook’s open letter is on Apple’s homepage and headlines about the government’s demands are all over the news. From my view, Apple customers seem to be overwhelmingly in favor of Tim Cook’s position, while presidential candidates are unsurprisingly siding with the FBI. Where do you weigh in? Here’s what we know so far.
I laid out the three reasons I believe Apple is right to stand firm on encryption back in November. The tl;dr version was in the summary.
So weakening encryption would mean sacrificing core principles of civilized societies in the name of security. It would provide not just our own government but foreign governments and criminals with access to our data. And it would do absolutely nothing to prevent terrorists from communicating in secret.
Gratifyingly, 93% of you agreed with me. But much as you and I both think Apple is right, the company now appears to be in an extremely tricky position. Not only does it have a court order instructing it to assist the FBI in breaking into one specific phone, but it appears very likely that it has the technical ability to comply with this order.
Tim Cook currently remains defiant, but how likely is it that Apple could succeed in fighting the order … ?
Apple has just posted an open letter in response to the FBI unlock request for iPhone data in a San Bernardino court case, signed by Tim Cook. Apple says that the FBI court order is an unprecedented step which threatens the security of its customers. With ‘implications far beyond the legal case at hand’ at stake, Apple has posted its public response to start communication with regard to this issue.
Apple says it has complied with valid warrants in regard to the San Bernardino case, but now the FBI has gone too far in Cook’s eyes … asking Apple to create something ‘ too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.’
Three days ago Apple released an iOS 9.2.1 update with seemingly arbitrary ‘security updates and bug fixes’ listed in the release notes. As we’ve seen time and time again with these type of software updates, most often these small updates seem to go ignored by the general public. We stress how important it is to keep your device up to date, even with small security updates like this.
As is customary after Apple releases a security update version of iOS, the firms and people that discovered the vulnerabilities are coming out explaining how and why these security updates matter. Apple has already included a breakdown of what security issues were resolved in iOS 9.2.1, but it’s still nice to get a further detailed look into what made the vulnerabilities possible in the first place.
SkyCure, a company helping in threat defense in EMM and MDM solutions, released a blog post this week detailing their discovery while noting that Apple had finally resolved it.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is the latest to weigh in on the issue of data encryption policy with the executive telling The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other tech execs should leave the decision making on encryption policy up to Congress:
“I don’t think it is Silicon Valley’s decision to make about whether encryption is the right thing to do. I understand Tim Cook’s decision, but I don’t think it’s his decision to make”… I personally think that this is an issue that should be decided by the American people and Congress, not by companies,”
…The AT&T chief said his own company has been unfairly singled out in the debate over access to data. “It is silliness to say there’s some kind of conspiracy between the U.S. government and AT&T,” he said, adding that the company turns over information only when accompanied by a warrant or court order.
That statement follows a meeting among Cook, other Silicon Valley executives and White House officials last week to discuss topics related to encryption policies and government access to data.