Nobody Won the Apple-FBI Standoff

[Agschmid]

The feds finally cracked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. Now Apple looks vulnerable—and the legal fight the FBI wants will have to wait.

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The FBI dropped its case against Apple on Monday, saying that it had “successfully accessed the data” stored on the San Bernardino, California, killer’s iPhone and, therefore, no longer needed the company’s assistance—which the bureau had been demanding in court and which Apple had been resisting.

This may seem like a happy ending all around, but in fact it’s a bad outcome for both parties—a bit more so for the bureau, at least in the short term.

Contrary to appearances, the fight was never about the specific phone used by Syed Farook. If it were—if FBI Director James Comey believed the phone contained data that was urgently needed for an investigation into terrorism—he could have sent a “Request for Technical Assistance” to the National Security Agency, as the FBI has done in such cases many times. The NSA could easily have hacked into the phone and turned over whatever it extracted to the bureau, officials say.

No, the FBI vs. Apple fight was always about—both parties rhetorically raised the stakes to make it about—the principles of privacy vs. security (or corporate security vs. national security) and whether decades of cooperation between telecoms and the intelligence agencies can survive new advances in encryption.

Source.

[awake]

1. Well it has bought time for Apple to add improved encryption for their next update

The FBI tried to get a backdoor built into the software and failed to do so this was never about the San Bernardino phone it was about allowing the FBI get a code to hack into any phone they wanted to. Now Apple will go even further in protecting their products from any Government hacking.

[longship]

2. It would have been really bad if Apple had caved.

And it would have been costly if they would have had to fight it in court.

And frankly, I would prefer that a company like Apple who will fight for privacy rights remain healthy and not have to fight in court for those rights. Meanwhile, there is little doubt that they will further secure their products in the future.

Plus, if I were them, I would sue the DOJ to obtain the technique used to break the iPhone so I could secure the hole that was exploited by the hack.

[Agschmid]

3. +1 on that last part.