# Should Apple help the government hack into encrypted devices? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 17, 2016, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333 "2016-02-17T13:20:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/641 "2016-03-22T00:16:39Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I think it’s full reverse back peddling designed to get their ass out of the Congressional line of fire. > > This was a company phone that was supposed to have software on it that allowed the company access. They didn’t destroy it. They did destroy their private phones. > > The FBI didn’t have public support, they didn’t have Congressional support and I doubt they had a legal case to work with. This was always a legal fishing expedition and they thought nobody would notice. Everybody noticed. A slight majority of Americans think apple should help unlock the phone. > **[Poll: Apple Should Help FBI Unlock Terrorism Suspect's iPhone](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/22/467716809/poll-apple-should-help-fbi-unlock-terrorism-suspects-iphone)** > > The majority of Americans — 51 percent — think that the tech giant should cooperate with a court order to help the FBI access a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, according to a new Pew survey. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/642 "2016-03-22T00:40:02Z")
That poll is a little old. As people have learned more, they have [increasingly](http://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-divided-over-apples-phone-privacy-fight-wsj-nbc-poll-shows-1457499601) sided with Apple. Not that it matters. On complicated issues like this polling is pretty much meaningless. But it is surprising that “terrorism is scary” has become much less effective than ten years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/643 "2016-03-22T02:04:04Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > That poll is a little old. As people have learned more, they have [increasingly](http://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-divided-over-apples-phone-privacy-fight-wsj-nbc-poll-shows-1457499601) sided with Apple. Not that it matters. On complicated issues like this polling is pretty much meaningless. But it is surprising that “terrorism is scary” has become much less effective than ten years ago. It’s function of getting past the initial sound bite. Congress did the same thing. I still have a gut feeling this was viewed as low hanging legal fruit and when the apple didn’t fall they had to walk it back. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/644 "2016-03-22T03:18:51Z")
I see three possible options, in descending order of likelihood: (1) The FBI saw its legal case going worse than expected and abandoned ship; (2) The FBI is so incompetent that it wasn’t aware of the alternative methods until this weekend; (3) The FBI knew of the alternative methods but for some reason doubted them until something changed their mind this weekend. Imagine being Judge Pym’s law clerk and clicking send on your scathing bench memo only to find the FBI has decided to cancel the hearing. It’d be enough to drive you to use PGP email, I tell ya! ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/645 "2016-03-22T10:41:36Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Indeed. And, just to be clear, when I said the Feds are bluffing, I mean that I don’t even think their so-called ‘third party’ even exists. Or, if it does, it’s probably one of the agent’s nerdy nephew. It’s a [reported bug in iMessage security](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/johns-hopkins-researchers-discovered-encryption-flaw-in-apples-imessage/2016/03/20/a323f9a0-eca7-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html): > [@](#): > > …[A] group of Johns Hopkins University researchers has found a bug in the company’s vaunted encryption, one that would enable a skilled attacker to decrypt photos and videos sent as secure instant messages. > > This specific flaw in Apple’s iMessage platform probably would not have helped the FBI pull data from an iPhone recovered in December’s San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack, but it shatters the notion that strong commercial encryption has left no opening for law enforcement and hackers, said Matthew D. Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University who led the research team… As noted, it’s not something that would actually help unlock the “at rest” data on an iPhone, which strengthens the suspicion that the FBI is looking for a face-saving excuse to bail after realizing that they picked the wrong fight. (Also as noted, it shows that the Feds’ yammering about “going dark” is about as worthy of serious consideration as a brat’s complaints about “going hungry” when he doesn’t get dessert until he finishes his vegetables.) ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/646 "2016-03-22T14:31:06Z")
No, it’s not the iMessage exploit. Matthew Green (the guy behind that work at JHU) has said it is most likely one of the hardware hacks everyone has known about for months. Plus, the FBI’s filing made clear that this method would unlock the phone. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/647 "2016-03-22T16:12:10Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > No, it’s not the iMessage exploit. Matthew Green (the guy behind that work at JHU) has said it is most likely one of the hardware hacks everyone has known about for months. Plus, the FBI’s filing made clear that this method would unlock the phone. Sounds like the FBI is hoping for the whole mess to go away before their quest for a favorable precedent ends up creating an unfavorable one. The iMessage exploit serves as a useful smokescreen (the Teeming Millions will just remember “somebody found a bug in the iPhone and then the FBI said they don’t need Apple to open the phone any more”), and after a decent interval they can announce (whether or not they actually have a way to get in) that there was no relevant data on the phone (because, duh, Farouk used the now-destroyed _personal_ phone for that stuff). ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2016, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/648 "2016-03-28T22:33:40Z")
[The FBI say](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/technology/apple-iphone-fbi-justice-department-case.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=61422942&pgtype=article) they have successfully broken into the phone using the ‘third party’ assistance mentioned above. Are they telling the truth? Or, is it just a nice job of closing the PR loop? Doubt we’ll ever know. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/649 "2016-03-29T11:06:23Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > [The FBI say](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/technology/apple-iphone-fbi-justice-department-case.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=61422942&pgtype=article) they have successfully broken into the phone using the ‘third party’ assistance mentioned above. > > Are they telling the truth? Or, is it just a nice job of closing the PR loop? Doubt we’ll ever know. It’s a nice job of closing the PR loop and taking a last cheap shot at Apple. The fact pattern of the case (this was a government-issued work phone; the shooters destroyed their personal phones but didn’t bother to destroy this one) clearly indicates that there is no relevant information to be had from it, which makes actually breaking into it (as opposed to setting a precedent, as they had hoped to do before things went pear-shaped for them) superfluous. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/650 "2016-03-29T14:32:55Z")
That was a fast billion billion years. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my debating opponents and tell them: Neener neener neener. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/651 "2016-03-29T14:34:18Z")
Wait, you think these events support your position in this thread **Scylla**? I don’t think I could come up with a more perfect evisceration of your position than for the FBI to give up after the briefing and then crack the phone itself. That’s the complete opposite of a psy-ops campaign to convince terrorists that they can’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/652 "2016-03-29T14:53:56Z")
The whole “it’s a ruse and they are already in the phone” is, as you say, eviscerated. This was founded on two basic principles: 1. The FBI is and was being clever (also eviscerated.) 2. Breaking into this phone isn’t the big old billion billion year problem everybody seemed to think it was. So, I was partially correct. In the grand tradition of the SDMB, being partially correct means I get to make great big sweeping claims of total victory. What about this don’t you get? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/653 "2016-03-29T14:56:01Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > In the grand tradition of the SDMB, being partially correct means I get to make great big sweeping claims of total victory. > > What about this don’t you get? I’m with you there, but I also think you’re straw-manning #2 by conflating the difficulty in mathematically cracking the encryption with the difficulty in black bagging a single phone. AFAIK, the technological consensus remains unchanged: it would be nigh-impossible to crack the encryption, but not-so-difficult to hack the delete-after-10-attempts hardware mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/654 "2016-03-29T15:00:11Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > The whole “it’s a ruse and they are already in the phone” is, as you say, eviscerated. > > This was founded on two basic principles: > > 1. The FBI is and was being clever (also eviscerated.) > 2. Breaking into this phone isn’t the big old billion billion year problem everybody seemed to think it was. > > So, I was partially correct. > > In the grand tradition of the SDMB, being partially correct means I get to make great big sweeping claims of total victory. > What about this don’t you get? Your main claim was that the FBI has secretly broken the AES256 encryption algorithm, probably by comparing one plaintext encryption to another plaintext encryption. You’re not even close. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/655 "2016-03-29T15:06:04Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Your main claim was that the FBI has secretly broken the AES256 encryption algorithm, probably by comparing one plaintext encryption to another plaintext encryption. > > You’re not even close. You need to read more carefully. I was asked how I proposed the FBI got into the phone, and that was one possibility among several that I gave. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/656 "2016-03-29T15:43:01Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > My contention is that they are already in the phone. This public song and dance is to convince any associates or terrorists in general that they are safe using their phones. > . > > That being the case I would say that it is still almost a certainty that the phone has been broken. This is because the easiest way to break a particular instance or iteration of a code is by already knowing its content. If you know nothing about the content than cracking the code is likely as difficult as you suggest. However we know an awful lot about what’s on that phone. It has an operating system and tons of applications which are going to be line to line identical to every other phone with those apps and operating systems. We are talking about millions and millions of lines of code to work with. This is much much more than a Rosetta Stone. We also know dactyl how the encryption system works. The only thing we don’t have is the key. But we have millions of lines of code from which to derive it. > > Enigma was famously cracked because the code breakers figured out that the Germans always ended with “Heil Hitler.” > [@Scylla](#): > > I consider it a virtual certainty that the government has already broken the encryption and gotten everything they want off the phone. This is almost certainly a head fake by the government to convince the terrorists that they didn’t get anything off the phone and that they are perfectly safe storing and transmitting all kinds of info with their phones (which the government has already cloned.) … > > This whole public thing is almost surely to convince evil doers of the security send sanctity of the data on their phones so that they will rely on it. > This is one of my favorite tricks, well known to economists, rock stars and the biblical Solomon. Those I believe are your first two posts in the thread that generally lay out your thesis. There’s a lot more back and forth on how you think AES 256 is like a complex substitution cypher (I’m being simplistic here). But your main points were: 1. FBI has been in the phone for a long time 2. They did it by comparing some known phrase like “Heil Hitler” in the memory of the phone. 3. FBI intended to lie to say they weren’t in the phone so as not to alert terrorists. The problems are: there’s no evidence that the FBI has been in the phone for more than a few days; that’s not how AES works; and the FBI has now alerted the terrorists that they can hack iPhones. I’m just not seeing where you were right on anything, with the caveat that nobody can prove claim #1 conclusive true or false at this point. Which post of yours, precisely, are you saying I didn’t read carefully enough? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/657 "2016-03-29T17:20:50Z")
Whatever, dude. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/658 "2016-03-29T22:13:07Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > It’s a nice job of closing the PR loop and taking a last cheap shot at Apple. The fact pattern of the case (this was a government-issued work phone; the shooters destroyed their personal phones but didn’t bother to destroy this one) clearly indicates that there is no relevant information to be had from it, which makes actually breaking into it (as opposed to setting a precedent, as they had hoped to do before things went pear-shaped for them) superfluous. It will be interesting to see if Congress lets this go. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/659 "2016-03-30T00:52:14Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > It will be interesting to see if Congress lets this go. The fact that the current Congress would be hard pressed to reach a consensus on which pizza toppings to order works in the nation’s favor in this case. Another interesting question is how this affects future court cases, given that the FBI’s rationale “we _need_ to make them help us; there’s no other way” is now gutshot. They may have to rely on one-off hacks in the future (which would be a good thing, as it would require a significant investment of resources for each case, ruling out bulk surveillance and forcing a pick-and-choose triage of actual criminal cases (e.g. “no, we’re not spending ten grand to open some pot grower’s phone”). Even the inefficiency would be beneficial in and of itself – as Bruce Schneier points out [here](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/mass_surveillan_1.html), overly efficient law enforcement suppresses social progress: [QUOTE=Bruce Schneier, “Data and Goliath”] Across the US, states are on the verge of reversing decades-old laws about homosexual relationships and marijuana use. If the old laws could have been perfectly enforced through surveillance, society would never have reached the point where the majority of citizens thought those things were okay. There has to be a period where they are still illegal yet increasingly tolerated, so that people can look around and say, “You know, that wasn’t so bad.” Yes, the process takes decades, but it’s a process that can’t happen without lawbreaking… [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cabin_fever_1/32/2908_2.png) [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333/660 "2016-03-30T06:01:26Z")
[Here is some late news about the "private 3rd party.](http://www.cellebrite.com/Pages/ios-forensics-physical-extraction-decoding-and-analysis-from-ios-devices) > **[FBI hacks attacker’s iPhone, drops Apple suit](https://www.timesofisrael.com/fbi-hacks-attackers-iphone-drops-apple-suit/)** > > Israeli cybersecurity company rumored to have helped Justice Department officials crack open terrorist's phone [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-apple-help-the-government-hack-into-encrypted-devices/746333.md?page=34)