{"id":19908,"date":"2017-12-20T11:17:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T16:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=19908"},"modified":"2024-11-08T15:30:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T20:30:11","slug":"apple-calea-and-law-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/20\/apple-calea-and-law-enforcement\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple, CALEA, and Law Enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawfareblog.com\/apple-calea-and-law-enforcement\">Matthew Green<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.lawfareblog.com\/apple-calea-and-law-enforcement\"><p>Nick contends this is a serious weakness in iMessage; I agree. This problem can arise in iMessage because of the way the iMessage protocol has been set up. Neither the sender nor the receiver has a way of knowing if any others are in the communications path because Apple provides no way for Alice or Bob to check. Other end-to-end encrypted systems have been designed to prevent this problem. WhatsApp or Signal, for example, both provide users a way to check if there is a man in the middle (see <a href=\"https:\/\/faq.whatsapp.com\/en\/general\/28030015\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/support.signal.org\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115000267971-What-is-a-safety-number-and-why-do-I-see-that-it-changed-\">here<\/a> respectively). This is  a security weakness of the iMessage protocol and should be fixed.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>There&rsquo;s another way that Alice and Bob&rsquo;s encrypted communication can be eavesdropped upon. Because iMessage allows multiple devices on a single account, Apple could add the FBI as a second &ldquo;virtual device&rdquo; to Bob&rsquo;s account.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>If Apple was to change its technology to be able to surreptitiously add a device to the account&mdash;that&rsquo;s the way the wiretapping would work&mdash;it would have to deactivate the warning system. (Otherwise the bad guy would know he&rsquo;s being tapped.)<\/p><p>The real question is not whether Apple can do this. (The answer is yes.) The real answer is whether Apple can do this in a way that doesn&rsquo;t disrupt the system for everyone else and destroy their security. That&rsquo;s far from clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Green: Nick contends this is a serious weakness in iMessage; I agree. This problem can arise in iMessage because of the way the iMessage protocol has been set up. Neither the sender nor the receiver has a way of knowing if any others are in the communications path because Apple provides no way for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-11-08T20:30:12Z","apple_news_api_id":"95d00a0e-3e5f-4fd5-94f8-c7d3a6b8fc93","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-11-08T20:30:13Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AldAKDj5fT9WU-MfTprj8kw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38,1347,140,31,1472,2686,209,355,48],"class_list":["post-19908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation-fbi","tag-imessage","tag-ios","tag-ios-11","tag-law-enforcement","tag-legal","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19909,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19908\/revisions\/19909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}