{"id":25034,"date":"2019-04-17T16:47:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T20:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=25034"},"modified":"2019-04-17T16:47:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T20:47:26","slug":"the-time-tim-cook-stood-his-ground-against-the-fbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/17\/the-time-tim-cook-stood-his-ground-against-the-fbi\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time Tim Cook Stood His Ground Against the FBI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leander Kahney<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Cook was very concerned about how Apple would be perceived throughout this media firestorm. He wanted very much to use it as an opportunity to educate the public about personal security, privacy, and encryption. “I think a lot of reporters saw a new version, a new face of Apple,” said the PR person, who asked to remain anonymous. “And it was Tim’s decision to act in this fashion. Very different from what we have done in the past. We were sometimes sending out emails to reporters three times a day on keeping them updated.”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Privacy advocates celebrated the end of the case and Apple’s apparent victory. “The FBI’s credibility just hit a new low,” said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future, an activist group that promotes online privacy. “They repeatedly lied to the court and the public in pursuit of a dangerous precedent that would have made all of us less safe. Fortunately, internet users mobilized quickly and powerfully to educate the public about the dangers of backdoors, and together we forced the government to back down.”<\/p>\n

But Cook was personally disappointed that the case didn’t come to trial. Even though Apple had “won” and wouldn’t be forced to create the backdoor, nothing had really been resolved. “Tim was a little disappointed that we didn’t get a resolution,” said Sewell. He “really felt it would have been fair and it would have been appropriate for us to have tested these theories in court. . . . [Though] the situation that was left at the end of that was not a bad one for us, he would have preferred to go ahead and try the case.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I still<\/a> think<\/a> this story has been mostly misreported in that Apple already had a backdoor to access Syed Farook’s iPhone 5c. Commenter lern_too_spel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What really happened is that Apple loudly proclaimed that they had made it impossible to comply with government data requests and even had a marketing page masquerading as a privacy page explaining that. The FBI asked Apple to put a build on a phone that would allow them to brute force the passcode, leaving the device and the build on Apple’s premises the entire time. This showed that Apple’s claim was false in practice. Apple quickly removed that marketing page in the wake of the news.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

At the time Apple made the false marketing claims, no passcode was required to install a signed build. Hence, the FBI’s request.<\/p>\n

The FBI was asking for no more than what Apple could already do, and it was letting Apple control the whole process. The problem was that what Apple could already do disagreed with what Apple told its customers that it could do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n