FBI boss: Apple's iPhone, iPad encryption puts people 'ABOVE THE LAW' FBI Director James Comey has complained that Apple and Google's use of stronger encryption in smartphones and tablets makes it impossible for cops and g-men to collar criminals. "There will come a day – well it comes every day in this business – when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that …
Funnily enough MrsPage and I watched (for the first time) "The Men Who Stare at Goats" last night.
Although we had a good chuckle at the "New Age Army", it was hard to forget the films opening statement ... "More of this is true than you would believe".
Top film, btw.
"I am a huge believer in the rule of law, but I am also a believer that no one in this country is above the law," Comey moaned today.
I would further point out that if he really believes this, he should be campaigning for all the people who are violating the "unreasonable seizure and search" provisions in US law to be prosecuted to the full extent of that law. It's the actions of his colleagues in the government law and security apparatus who are making his future job more difficult because they do think they're above the law.
Well, from Comer's point of view, to paraphrase Tricky Dickey..."I guess you could say that if the (insert 3 letter org. here) does it, it is not illegal." So, to have those pesky US - Global entities Apple and Google go ahead and put themselves in the position of not being able to be summonsed, well! That JUST WON"T DO!!!! THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!!!!
Agreed. I don't know what the exact crime stats are, but the police/government would have you believe that there are more criminals out there than honest, law abiding citizens. This is utter bollocks. You don't burn your house down to protect your family from a pyromaniac, you get a decent fire alarm and make sure you pay your taxes so you have a decent friendly neighbourhood fireman to come and save you, and a decent policewoman to find the criminal and bring them to justice. THEN you find them after their 2 week holiday, sorry, life sentence, beat them, pour petrol all over them and burn them alive in a sacrifice to the great firehawk...
"Agreed. I don't know what the exact crime stats are, but the police/government would have you believe that there are more criminals out there than honest, law abiding citizens. This is utter bollocks."
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. There ARE more criminals then there are law-abiding citizens, because we have made such a rediculous set of laws you can't help put step on one. They treat every like a criminal, because everyone is a criminal, it's just a matter of figuring out what you've done.
PAPERS CITIZEN!
With a court order, of the law correctly enforced, there are two situations:
1. Compelling the suspect to reveal his information, with attendant 5th Amendment considerations.
2. Compelling a 3rd party to release your information. This is what Apple and Google want to avoid. It's Expensive, it's bad publicity, it's liable to further complications.
"That is what Apple wants to avoid."
Google never had the capability, nor did the device manufacturers.
Apple wants credit for no longer doing a wrong thing, as well as for making data security sort of a default. Google doesn't want to seem be unconcerned, so follows in making encryption a default.
The correct thing here is for the government to obtain a warrant to serve on the device owner, to be followed up by contempt of court punishment if the owner fails to get the warrant suppressed and refuses to open up the data. While I'm not a lawyer, I suspect the Fifth Amendment is not a major barrier; I would guess that search warrants have been issued, and executed, that require opening a safe, although in that case the police have a realistic physical alternative.
I find this to be a very interesting 5th Amendment issue, though probably in my legal naivete.
It seems to me that the information stored on mobile devices is akin or maybe adjacent to the information stored in people's heads. To compel them to allow access to that information is to compel them to incriminate themselves even if indirectly which would be a violation of their 5th Amendment rights. I'm sure courts have established otherwise, but then, they think corporations are people and money is speech.
If they want phone calls, SMS, MMS, browsing history, IMEI, or location they can go to the network with the phone number.
If they want WhatsApp messages they can go to WhatsApp with the phone number.
If they want Facebook or Twitter messages they can find whoever it is on Facebook or Twitter and go to Facebook and Twitter.
If they want cloudy data they can go to the cloud provider (Apple, Google, MS, BlackBerry - check IMEI to find out which one) with the phone number.
Preferably with a court order.
What else do they really need?
They want to be able to search the phone the same way the frisk you in a stop and search without a court order.
That was borderline reasonable in the past when the phone contained a very little amount of data - f.e. just the people you called last.
In this day and age for a lot of people half of their "life" is on the phone. It is not different from searching your house. It contains a replica of all of your contacts, mails, financial information, etc. in the past to get that you had to go get a court order and turn the suspect house upside down.
So what he wants is to get that information without a court order using the phone as a backdoor the same way as he has managed to do that for a few years. There are some bad news for him. There is a court ruling already that he cannot use that information in law enforcement without a court order (I believe either New York or DC circuit of appeals). This makes most evidence obtained this way inadmissible in court. That ruling will probably stand all the way to the Supremes because it is obvious.
So he should stop bitching, pay attention to what the courts say and comply with the rule of law. Yeah, I know, difficult for a place founded and built by J.E. Hoover.
Downvoting because the basic claims put forward are simply false. Apple required warrrants and physical access to the phone, according to reports, so warrants always were in order there. And Comey's comments had to do with execution of search warrants issued by courts, not (now, in some circuits) searching of phones without a warrant.
"so warrants always were in order there"
Have you been sleeping under a rock for the also few years? Let me give you a brief simplified history lesson.
A guy called Snowden published to the world the fact that court orders were not required to access user data there was a large trawling effort that just captured anything whether that is 'naughty' webcam chats with your other half or you communications with your lawyer. It did this by tapping directly into the communications infrastructure, by forcing service providers to install backdoors and intercepting traffic in pother ways. All this was done without public scrutiny, with secret courts and with gagging clauses for the providers of services. It has been proved that this was illegal and overreaching.
The only way to stop this was for the service providers to use encryption which is believed to be currently unbreakable and leave a single key with the user. This means that they will have to be targeted as an individual and that the court order to access their encrypted data must be directed to the user themselves. The Service provider then doesn't have to spend millions arguing in a secret court to judges who are political allies or don't understand technology as they don't have anyway of complying with any request.
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Eh? The court of Moral opinion would be too easy an answer so how about running a Google search?
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (The Government Executive Branch) and
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon have both made their report about the legality.
".....The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board....." Is a talking shop meant with no legal powers and is most definitely not a court. You fail.
"....U.S. District Judge Richard Leon....." Made a ruling regarding a specific case and limited it only to that case, and only said it was 'likely' unconstitutional. His ruling was also not final as he referred the case to the District Court and not a final ruling as to the legality of the NSA's actions nor a win for the five plaintiffs. So you fail again.
"...Snowden published to the world the fact that court orders were not required to access user..." has, of course, nothing at all to do with Comey's complaint that properly issued warrants will be more difficult to execute due to Apple changing its encryption implementation and more widespread use of encryption generally.
"The only way to stop this was for the service providers to use encryption which is believed to be currently unbreakable". But they have not actually done anything yet to the bulk of cell phone communication data. Comey's subject was data at rest in smart phones and similar devices. As the Supreme court ruled in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, these searches require a warrant. Apple has stated that in the past they demanded a warrant before decrypting an iPhone for the police. For Google, the question is moot, as they never had a way to comply with such requests.
It sounds as if what he's saying is that having a right to keeping conversations, images, home videos private is above the law. I thought a right to privacy was, precisely, "the law".
I'm getting a sense of "the lady doth protest too much, methinks" and this is part of the campaign to give users a false sense of security. As a number of commenters have already said, there are many other avenues to get metadata, or other evidence, physical or virtual, that can point towards what is likely contained on the encrypted device, or that make the contents of the encrypted device inconsequential to getting a warrant or conviction.
There's always a trail, unless you're dealing with someone at The Grugq's level of computery counter intelligence and at that level of discipline any arguments over default encryption by Apple and Google are rendered moot.
P.S. The guns, drugs, bags of fertilizer, little boys, sex workers, and my missus' bruises are all hidden in my phone, which is encrypted, so even if we're pulled over there's nothing 'the man' can do about it. Let's ride!
> P.S. The guns, drugs, bags of fertilizer, little boys, sex workers, and my missus' bruises are all hidden in my phone, which is encrypted, so even if we're pulled over there's nothing 'the man' can do about it. Let's ride!
Erm, you do realise that, by stating that in a public forum, you are giving the courts the ability to order you to unlock your phone or be held in contempt of court (and fined/ locked up for it until you do so) because you have thereby given them evidence that you do have illegal material on your phone?
Not sure if my attempt at black humour fell flat or I missed your attempt at dry humour, but I can't see how the stating of obvious physical impossibilities could become the basis for any law enforcement investigation. If the situation does come to pass, however, is there a 'you didn't get the joke' clause that can be invoked to minimise the wastage of the public purse?
If not, I'm going to have to work out how to get one of those Roger Rabbit holes stuffed into my phone as well, or further protect the contents of the phone by relocating an Icelandic volcano into it.
"Did the FBI finally create an account here? What's with all the single downvotes?"
Yes, I've noticed it too, in a lot of threads. Relatively innocuous, factual replies often seem to get a single down vote.
I think that this is the El Reg equivalent of the Tooth Fairy. Instead of money under your pillow people get a random down vote instead. It happens to me sometimes, much to my amusement.
It might be of interest if a webmaster at El Reg could take a look and see if there is one person running around with the down vote stick and let us know if it an organised campaign. No need to say who the person is, just whether it's happening or not.
i think this particular pendulum has just begun the return swing and the 3-letter agencies are in for a lot more swing back toward humans having human rights as "guaranteed" by their constitutions or whatever the prevailing local system is.
[that said, the director can just eat a bag of lightly salted, poison rat dicks]
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