He states that it is for this specific case, but seems to miss the point that there are other law enforcement officials waiting on the wings with their requests should this precedent be set.
The war against privacy escalates. Setting aside the actual practicality of unlocking the San Bernadino phone, the teams that are emerging on this issue include some pretty strange bedfellows:
John McAfee and Bill Gates on the pro-unlocking side, and Woz, Edward Snowden and even some of the victim's families on the con.
Bill Gates ‘Disappointed’ by Reports He Backs FBI Over Apple
Public protest
If you're counting on Apple to keep your digital information safe, you may want to think again ... at least if you live in Australia.
It appears that implementing comprehensive telephone and email retention in Australia may not have been the end of demands by law enforcement in the country.
https://placesjournal.org/article/inside-mexico-citys-c4i4-surveillance-center/
Apple engineers have already begun developing new security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone using methods similar to those now at the center of a court fight in California, according to people close to the company and security experts.
If Apple succeeds in upgrading its security — and experts say it almost surely will — the company would create a significant technical challenge for law enforcement agencies, even if the Obama administration wins its fight over access to data stored on an iPhone used by one of the killers in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., rampage.
The F.B.I. would then have to find another way to defeat Apple security, setting up a new cycle of court fights and, yet again, more technical fixes by Apple.
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The Wall Street Journal (paywalled) is reporting that the Department of Justice is seeking Apple's help in decrypting 12 other iPhones that may contain crime-related evidence.
The cases are not identified, though a list of the 12 phones in question has come out, but it is not known what level of Apple assistance is required (i.e., how many of those cases are waiting on the FBI request for special firmware to be developed and to be used on "one more phone").
It appears Tim Cook's assertion that hundreds of requests are waiting on this software may not be a fabrication, and the goal is not about just one phone, but to set a precedent to unlock more phones.
As TechDirt (which also lists those 12 cases, a list which certainly does not encompass all the phones the Feds would like to peer into) puts it, "[O]nce again, Director Comey was flat out lying when he claimed the FBI has no interest in setting a precedent."
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TIL a mason in 1700's Jerusalem left his wooden ladder behind after doing some work on a church and now it can't be moved without the agreement and permission of six different Christian leaders.
_)(***
Security Ledger has a piece that looks at the efforts of a string of startups to secure ATM transactions from skimmers and malware-based attacks.
Step 1: get rid of the ATM card. The article profiles a couple different companies.
One, Trusona, has technology that can uniquely identify standard issue ATM cards by analyzing the unique distribution of Barium Ferrite particles on their magnetic strips and using it to connect the card to the customer.
The company combines that with card swipe biometrics to thwart malware-based replay attacks.
The article also mentions upgrades that will allow banking customers in the U.S. to use a mobile application to withdraw cash from ATMs without a card or PIN, and a prototype from Diebold that combines proximity based sensing (via NFC) with iris scans to authenticate customers and authorize transactions.
Cool as it sounds, its worth remembering that most ATM attacks are decidedly "low tech."
A survey by the ATM Industry Association in 2015 listed "physical attacks" and those using "explosives" as the second and third most common type of ATM attack after card skimming.
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Always remember, ya got to land on the white stuff!
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