NSA Is Mysteriously Absent From FBI-Apple Fight

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/35563-nsa-is-mysteriously-absent-from-fbi-apple-fight

But notably missing from the FBI’s argument was any mention of whether it had consulted spies and sleuths from the government’s intelligence community — particularly the National Security Agency.

The Twitterverse exploded with questions. Couldn’t the NSA break open the phone? If it could, why didn’t it?

Apple itself raised those questions in a court filing. “The government has not made any showing that it sought or received technical assistance from other federal agencies with expertise in digital forensics, which assistance might obviate the need to conscript Apple to create the back door it now seeks,” the company’s attorneys wrote.

The NSA, after all, has long targeted digital encryption systems for exploitation, and, as The Intercept revealed in 2015, the CIA and NSA have been working for nearly a decade specifically to find ways to hack into Apple devices. Those agencies could presumably help the FBI do what it wants to do to Farook’s iPhone: place a modified version of Apple’s iOS operating system on the device that allows rapid, unlimited attempts to guess Farook’s encryption passcode.

Peter Thomson, a former federal prosecutor who worked on special assignment at the NSA, told The Intercept, “I know of no case law that would put the burden on the FBI to go to the intelligence community,” adding, “I don’t think the NSA has to share what it can and can’t do.”

[Make7]

1. What better way to conceal that the government can hack iPhones...

... than to fight a public battle with Apple to get them to hack into an iPhone?

[Warren Stupidity]

2. The NSA stopped caring about digital encryption almost 20 years ago.

They seem to have worked out how to deal with it and dropped their efforts to either prevent its widespread use or require backdoor access mechanisms.

[Hydra]

6. 50/50

Rumors of supercomputers built just to break the encryption, but new quantum methods to break it(they probably had that 20 years ago, so may not be coincidental), but also quantum methods to encrypt that are possibly unbreakable.

It's quite possible they can read everyone's mail, but don't really care what we do as long as it doesn't rock their boat.

[juxtaposed]

3. nsa is not in the world of what one would think, nsa only cares about our friends and what their

company's are doing. The nsa is not an anti-terrorist group they are a US corporate information group..

[BillZBubb]

4. The FBI doesn't want NSA involved. This isn't about being able to decrypt anything.

This is about setting a legal precedent where the government can request manufacturers to give up information whenever the government deems it necessary.

The whole charade is about that, not what is on this particular phone. When the FBI and other players got the phone of the dead terrorist, they immediately knew they had a way to win over the public and the courts to their desire to get access to private data. TERRORISM!

Of course NSA could crack that phone. Probably other agencies as well. But by doing that, the government loses the legal case to force companies like Apple to do their bidding.

[Wounded Bear]

5. The NSA isn't involved?

Yeah, right.