Edward Snowden: FBI's claim it needs Apple to unlock iPhone is 'bull****'

[mitty14u2]

Source: telegraph.co.uk

9 MARCH 2016 • 6:15PM


Whistleblower Edward Snowden has rubbished the FBI's claims only Apple has access to the iPhone 5c at the centre of the San Bernardino case, dismissing the allegation as "bull****".
Last month a US judge ordered the Californian company to aid an FBI investigation in gaining access to the encrypted data held on an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people in San Bernardino last December.
Sheri Pym ruled Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to investigators seeking to unlock the data on Farook's iPhone 5c.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/09/edward-snowden-fbis-claim-it-needs-apple-to-unlock-iphone-is-bul/

Solidarity With Apple Masks Unease In Silicon Valley About Legal Fight Over Dead Terrorist’s iPhone

SAN FRANCISCO — The tech industry is giving Apple a great show of solidarity as it ramps up its legal battle with the FBI. Over the past week, fellow tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo filed friends-of-the-court briefs in support of the iPhone maker, saying Apple should not be compelled by the U.S. government to create a password workaround that would retrieve the phone’s data.

But behind Silicon Valley’s united front lies significant unease about the case at hand, and the sense that Apple has picked the wrong fight in going to bat over a dead terrorist’s smartphone. No one wants Apple to lose, but some tech leaders privately wonder if they’ve been dragged into a political and public relations battle that it will be difficult to win.

“There are people who believe this was the worst case Apple could have chosen to fight on,” said one policy executive at a competing tech company. “It was a city phone; the guy is dead. There are people who think the facts aren’t great and that Apple should have quietly complied to avoid setting a bad legal precedent.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/solidarity-apple-masks-unease-silicon-valley-about-legal-fight-over-dead-terrorists-2323887


Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/09/edward-snowden-fbis-claim-it-needs-apple-to-unlock-iphone-is-bul/

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A-lot more hear then meets the eye!

[LiberalArkie]

1. The NSA could have done it in a few minutes.

They have wanted a backdoor into everything digital since Bill Clinton and the Clipper chip.


Edit: Apple a couple of years ago fired some programmers who they found were also being paid by the NSA.

[blackspade]

2. The FBI is doing the NSA's dirty work.

Probably in return for complete database access.
This surveillance shit is nauseating.

[harun]

6. They are, and this case was picked for a reason, not by Apple but by the Feds because they felt they

could win public support with it.

[JDPriestly]

3. Excellent.

One of my favorite books is a collection of the letters exchanged by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in their post-presidency years.

They had the luxury of being frank with each other on many topics, even religion.

I suspect that the only way that two former presidents could indulge in such communications today would be if they resorted to the old-fashioned method of delivery either by horseback or some other form of courier.

That is why Hillary's e-mail problem just doesn't trouble me that much. At least she was trying to claim a private space for her correspondence. Of course, that was impossible because the NSA could have read her e-mails just as easily as they can retrieve and read mine, but at least she had the illusion of a bit of privacy in spite of her public position.

I appreciate what Snowden is saying more than other people I think because I have life experiences that have educated me on what phone service really is.

My great-aunt used to be "central" in a little town in the Midwest. We kids would go to visit her in her office and she showed off how she connected people on party lines and with their phones. She was listening in a lot. She knew all the gossip first, and boy did she love that. For a middle-aged, gossip of a woman in a small town in the Midwest, it was just heavenly to listen in on all that news.

And then I worked for the phone company. Part of my job was tracking down occasional calls posted to the wrong number. Prior to the electronic connections of the phone lines, it was possible for a number to be billed for calls that had not issued from that number. Some of the phones were still not connected electronically with the rest of the system. The basement of the building in which the telephone company was located was a maze, a very orderly maze, of wires. I was ineligible for a job in that technical part of the company because I am slightly colorblind.

I think that same kind of a maze of connections is what Snowden describes. It is very systematic, and he is right about how easily it can be penetrated and how easy it is to listen in so to speak to others' phone calls if that is what you want to do.

Snowden is right. We need to define and reclaim our rights under the First and Fourth Amendments and other amendments to privacy.

I traveled in Eastern Europe prior to 1988. Surveillance eventually silences people. They do not feel at ease in communicating as freely as people do when there is no surveillance or at least no awareness of surveillance.

We are now probably under more surveillance than people were even in East Germany.

And we need to change that. We are not such a criminal or dangerous or subversive or terroristic people that we need to impose such a great degree of surveillance on our selves or even allow such surveillance on ourselves.

It just isn't necessary and it will imprison our thoughts sooner or later. The more we become aware of the surveillance, the more imprisoned our thoughts will become. Let's don't become the Eastern Europe of the future.

I have to add that, at 72, I often laugh at the thought of people in important places trying to have sexual affairs nowadays. How in the world do they think that their agreeing to a rendez-vous goes unrecorded.

That's a rather silly concern in my view, a side-effect. But I bet that if some of the very powerful among us realized that their personal lives are being scrutinized along with the private lives of drug dealers and terrorists, they would have second thoughts about surveillance.

[JesterCS]

4. It's not hard to figure out

That the govt is seeking the means to make it legal to snoop into anyone's phone, despite encryption or passwords.

[wildbilln864]

5. k & r & thanks! n/t