Big Brother is Watching You

[rstrong]

Also known as Windows 10.

I'm reminded of the old geopolitical strategy game Balance of Power, which I used to run on Windows 1.0: Backing terrorists would inevitably get a country into a lot of trouble. The exception was Iran, because everyone simply expected it of them.

Privacy issues get Microsoft and Apple in trouble. But strip-mining your data - through Android, Chrome, Nest hardware, searches and whatnot - doesn't get Google in trouble because everyone simply expects it of them.

[Vrede too]

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I respect your opinion.

[Vrede too]

Anyhow, my point was that the USA is connecting to all of your Canadian devices and accessing the data, too, not knocking Canadians.

[rstrong]

CBC: Canada (temporarily) Halts Five Eyes Metadata Sharing Over Privacy Concerns

Canada's electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment, has stopped sharing certain metadata with its international partners after discovering that identifying information wasn't being sufficiently protected before the data was shared.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says the sharing won't resume until he is satisfied that the proper protections are in place.

[bannination]

Also known as Windows 10.

I'm reminded of the old geopolitical strategy game Balance of Power, which I used to run on Windows 1.0: Backing terrorists would inevitably get a country into a lot of trouble. The exception was Iran, because everyone simply expected it of them.

Privacy issues get Microsoft and Apple in trouble. But strip-mining your data - through Android, Chrome, Nest hardware, searches and whatnot - doesn't get Google in trouble because everyone simply expects it of them.

They're in trouble with me. Which is why I don't use Android, Chrome, Nest hardware, google search, etc.

(Well I will admit I'll use google when I come up empty on say https://www.duckduckgo.com)

Not fool proof, but all we can do is try. It's the ISP level that everyone forgets about, they get the truly good bits. (No pun intended)

[Vrede too]

Challenge to Military Spying on Antiwar Activists Gains Support of Grassroots and Legal Groups

[Vrede too]

Guatemalan authorities arrest SOA (U.S. Army's School of the Americas)-trained officers for massacres, disappearances

SOA Watch maintains that in order for there to truly be justice, those responsible in the U.S. for the training and funding one of Latin America's most brutal conflicts must be held to account in any and all courts applicable, whether they be domestic, regional or foreign. The U.S. doesn't have to look to far to see that lessons on justice and accountability can be learned through what is happening throughout Latin America.

Whether for the direct US torture under Cheney/Shrub or the sponsorship of torture and other gross abuses that has been going on far longer, there has never been US accountability.

School of the Americas Graduates Responsible For 1989 Jesuit Massacre Face Extradition to Spain, Military Officers Arrested in El Salvador

North Carolina/ El Salvador – The 1989 massacre of 16-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador, that galvanized opposition to the U.S. relationship with Central American death squads and that sparked the movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas, is making headlines again.

On Friday, February 5, 2016, a U.S. judge in North Carolina cleared the way for SOA graduate and retired Salvadoran Colonel, Inocente Orlando Montano, to be extradited to face charges in Spain. Col. Inocente Orlando Montano was trained by the U.S. military at the School of the Americas in 1970.

On Saturday, February 06, 2016, El Salvador's national police force announced that four ex-soldiers, who were also involved in the massacre, were arrested at the behest of Interpol in an operation that began Friday night....

[Vrede too]

The Real Stakes of Apple’s Fight With the FBI

Say NO to Encryption Backdoors for Government Agents (petition)

[O Really]

Let's say Apple builds a "safe house" - one with extraordinary security precautions. And a group of terrorists buy one and move in, along with all their terrorist gear and tech. Who thinks it would be reasonable for the Feds to just say, "Oh well, we can't do anything about them because they live in the safe house." Who thinks it would be reasonable to ask (or get the court to order if necessary) Apple to just open the damn door. Despite whatever parade of horribles one can bring up about FBI miscreants, the government is not the enemy, or at least not as much of an enemy as the terrorists. People and countries often enter into relationships with people they don't like or entirely trust, but to do so often is in their own best interest.

[Vrede too]

Poor metaphor, Apple could not build a house that the FBI could not find a way to breach without Apple's help.

Yes, the government is the enemy, more so than any terrorists. Our freedoms have been much more restricted by government than any terrorists have ever managed.

In the actual case, the FBI is demanding that Apple create something that does not exist, and the problem here is that creating that thing won't just reveal one terrorist's phone contents. It will throw open the door for nefarious government, criminals, foreign governments and other terrorists to exploit. That's a crappy trade off when there may not even be anything useful on that one dead terrorist's phone.

Of course, this is the whole purpose - they've found one entirely speculative example in order to try and defeat security measures that help protect hundreds of millions, something they've long wanted to do.

Plus, much of the data would have been available without endangering us all, but the government screwed up.

Apple: San Bernardino County screwed up the iPhone the FBI wants us to fix

Since this is unlikely to be allowed to happen again, the issue is less dire than it's being made out to be.

[rstrong]

Who thinks it would be reasonable to ask (or get the court to order if necessary) Apple to just open the damn door.

The two main problems with this metaphor:

- The terrorists aren't the only "bad guys" involved. There's also the identity thieves, criminals who want to steal your online banking information, criminals who want to encrypt and then ransom your data, criminals who want to add your device to a botnet to sent malware to others, criminals who want to trigger your phone to quietly call toll lines in other countries, etc. etc. etc. These criminals are so much more common that the threat from terrorists effectively don't exist.

- The FBI isn't demanding that Apple unlock a door. They're demanding that they unlock EVERYONE'S doors, and leave them effectively unlocked.

Back doors go back to the beginning of the computing age, as does the history of them being exploited. Even today, back doors in several brands of home routers are being used to build botnets - using the routers, not the PCs they're supposed to protect. If you add a back door it'll be found, and usually quickly. Ordering a back door is like ordering every home owner to keep a key under the front door mat. Saying "Only the police and you the home owner will know about it" simply isn't realistic.

What the FBI is asking is a bit more complicated: They want a "custom OS" that they can install that will unlock the phone.

But again, it won't be just the FBI. The NYPD will demand it. The DEA will demand it. The TSA will demand it. A hundred other police agencies will demand it. Consider the Stingray phone tracker - a mass surveillance device developed for the military and intelligence communities "to catch the terrorists", but now in widespread use by local and state law enforcement agencies. Now consider that every other country's police agencies will demand this "custom OS" too.

The "custom OS" will be leaked within months, if not weeks. Even if not, the hacking community would develop their own once they know it's possible. ("Jailbreaks" for iOS are typically released within a couple weeks, if not the same day.) It's simply a more complicated back door, and it too will quickly be exploited by the criminals.

[Vrede too]

Here's a better metaphor - There's one lawyer-client conference that the LEOs want to access because the lawyer might (they're not even sure there's anything there) be a co-conspirator. So, let's make all lawyer-client conferences available to the LEOs, forever. Would you support that, O Really?

[O Really]

Yes, the government is the enemy, more so than any terrorists. Our freedoms have been much more restricted by government than any terrorists have ever managed.

.

Yes, because the government both protects and infringes on freedoms, and an individual's contact with the government is much more frequent than contact with a terrorist. Statistically, you're more likely to get screwed (or even killed if you're black) by some level of government than you are by a terrorist. But it is also the government's job to catch criminals - terrorists and others - and it's in citizen's best interest that they do so.

[O Really]

Here's a better metaphor - There's one lawyer-client conference that the LEOs want to access because the lawyer might (they're not even sure there's anything there) be a co-conspirator. So, let's make all lawyer-client conferences available to the LEOs, forever. Would you support that, O Really?

Well, if the conference was one in which the client used with the intent of committing or covering up a crime or fraud, that would constitute an exception to attorney-client privilege.

The exception applies if the client was in the process of committing or intended to commit a crime or fraudulent act, and the client communicated with the lawyer with intent to further the crime or fraud, or to cover it up.

I'm not the tech expert you guys are, but I've read some pretty credible tech people who think it's bullshit that cracking this phone would make it possible for anybody to crack any phone.

[Vrede too]

You can't redefine the metaphor to get the answer you want.
There might be useful info. on the phone - the lawyer might be a co-conspirator.
With probable cause LEOs can access one lawyer-client conference, they don't get to make all of them more accessible.

I'm not a tech expert, I'm a civil liberties dilettante.

Why would Apple incur all the hassle if it's lying about vulnerabilities? It could have just helped the FBI and no one ever would have heard about it. With millions of hackers out there, many with bad intent, have you ever heard of a security gap that they haven't exploited?

[rstrong]

but I've read some pretty credible tech people who think it's bullshit that cracking this phone would make it possible for anybody to crack any phone.

You can also find "pretty credible scientists" who think that global warming is a hoax. They're a VERY small minority, and they usually have ties to oil companies, but they exist.

This is not an unfair comparison. The vast majority of experts agree that adding back doors destroy security.

Tech companies, privacy advocates, security experts, policy experts, all five members of President Obama’s handpicked Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, UN human rights experts, and a majority of the House of Representatives all agree: Government-mandated backdoors are a bad idea. There are countless reasons why this is true...

Which is why the FTC backs strong encryption and no back doors. It's why Both former Homeland Security boss Michael Chertoff and former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden both publicly agree with the head of the FBI and support strong encryption and no back doors.

Despite some claims to the contrary, Apple hasn't "done it 70 times before."

"Any phone"? Technically, no, of course not. But it would allow the cracking of any iPhone, which dominates the market. (And yes,that includes new iPhones despite claims to the contrary.)

"Any phone"? Technically, yes, of course. Once they establish that they can order a back door into iPhones, they've established that they can order one into Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. And routers and other devices.

[Vrede too]

Why This iPhone?
One thing getting lost in the Apple-FBI debate: It doesn’t seem likely that the device in question will yield any critical information.

[rstrong]

It's no secret that they've been looking for an the perfect case for a long time, to present to the public as THE reason to effectively ban encryption and privacy.

They made the claim about the Paris attacks, at least until it became common knowledge that the attackers coordinated using unencrypted SMS messages.

[O Really]

So John McAfee claims he could crack the phone. Let's say he could. What's keeping him (or somebody else) from cracking any phone they want? Other than maybe having something available to steal, why does it increase risk for Apple to do it?

[rstrong]

So John McAfee claims he could crack the phone. Let's say he could. What's keeping him (or somebody else) from cracking any phone they want? Other than maybe having something available to steal, why does it increase risk for Apple to do it?

First, that's a very big assumption to make. As Slashdot puts it:

Wondering what John McAfee is up to these days? It's not sniffing bath salts nor is he fleeing foreign countries as a person of interest in a murder investigation and faking heart attacks (been there, done all that) ; instead, he's on a mission to save America.

(And yes, McAfee has recently been there and done all that.)

In the op-ed where he makes the offer, he ALSO explains why the FBI shouldn't have its wish granted. Heck, it only takes four paragraphs for him to start talking about Nazis and Hitler.

He knows full well that the FBI isn't going to break the chain of custody for their evidence by handing it to him, invalidating it in court.

Here in Canada we usually have at least three parties running in elections. At least one with no hope whatsoever of winning the election. And so we're used to politicians making grandiose promises based on the knowledge that they'll never be in a position to have to keep them. This is what McAfee sounds like. And wouldn't you know it, he's running for president in the US as a member of the Libertarian Party.

Second, if it turns out to be possible - no matter WHO succeeds - Apple would be obligated to issue a patch to stop it from happening again. And here's where they're trapped: If they do it immediately, when only the police have the ability, they'll be accused of blocking only the police and not all the criminals. If they wait for the criminals to exploit it, it's too late.