U.S. Gov't Orders Apple to Backdoor iPhone

[metalhead]

If Apple loses, they can be hit with contempt of court charges if they refuse to comply. As Apple is a corporation, I doubt anyone can be jailed for the contempt, so probably they will be fined unless and until they comply.

I think the government will lose. It's an extremely dicey proposition to ask courts to order people (or corporations) to perform a specific action, absent them being guilty of some sort of wrongdoing. Government really has no power to compel beyond producing evidence to be used in a court case.

 

[Agent327]

Which is the exact reason why the FBI requested the court order: to obtain suspected evidence.

What might happen if Apple loses and still refuses to comply. what are the various "punishments" that could be imposed on the company or Tim cook?

If Apple loses what? This isn't a court case. It's a matter of whether Apple continues to not comply with the court order and face the consequences. If there were legal action to be undertaken against a court order, I don't think the CEO would have published an open letter (which legally has no effect whatsoever) to explain its position.

No, people's poor interpretations of Apple's positions are weak, Apple's position is fine. That post was purely in response to the technical argument.

Apple's position is not 'fine' at all. AFAIK there are no legal recourses around a court order. You either comply or face consequences.

No, it has no legal relevance.

Which was my point.

I already said pretty much this exact thing, if you read my posts.

I did, and noticed they had no legal relevance. You objected and now we seem to be in agreement. So why the objection in the first place?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

To the extent that Apple believes that compliance with this order would be unreasonably burdensome, it may make an application to this court for relief.

And if the court rejects that application, the rejection can be appealed. So starts the process.

The fact that "as far as you know there is no legal recourse" indicates that you not only haven't read Zelig's comments, but you haven't even read the court order in question. So, got it, having done no reading you don't know much.

 

[Birdjaguar]

So what are the consequences for Apple of not complying?

I did read today that Apple has moved to fight the order based on the 1st amendment and a 19th C ruling/law. It was in the WSJ, but I don't have a link atm.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

For the moment they have no consequences because they are complying. They have applied to the court for relief, based on their view that compliance would be an unreasonable burden. If their application is refused, they will appeal. Since their appeal is on constitutional grounds they can continue the appeals process all the way to the SCOTUS if necessary, and until the SCOTUS either refuses to hear the case or rules against them outright there probably won't be any consequences.

If that comes about there would be consequences of the "contempt of court" kind, possibly extending to "interfering with a federal investigation" or even "obstruction of justice." My guess is that if the legal option runs its course and they don't get relief they will fold, but even if it comes to that I respect the effort. An appeals process is an arduous journey.

 

[Agent327]

They won't 'fold', nor are they 'complying'. Apple just announced its intention to further update the security on their software.

The issue is, however, if a company should be expected to do the Justice departments work. If the FBI had been able to decrypt the phone in question, I doubt we would have seen a court order in the first place.

The obstruction of justice allegation would be a weak one, since there is no evidence of evidence: there is (reasonable or otherwise) suspicion of evidence. Apple can't be blamed for obstruction of justice, as they also don't know if the phone in question actually contains criminal evidence. In essence, the case is about determining whether there is incriminating evidence. That hardly seems a job for a company to perform.

And if the court rejects that application, the rejection can be appealed. So starts the process.

The fact that this is not being used by Apple should have told you 'unreasonable burdensome' hardly applies here. The question is not whether the court order is 'unreasonable burdensome': that's not the extent of Apple's objection to it, so it's not really relevant. If you had followed the case so far, you might also have noticed that the FBI has 'updated' its request to further accomodate Apple. That still doesn't change the fact that Justice is asking Apple to compromise its own security software.

 

[Flying Pig]

I imagine that, whatever the result of this case, the next patch to Apple's software will make these restrictions physically impossible to remove.

 

[Zelig]

I imagine that, whatever the result of this case, the next patch to Apple's software will make these restrictions physically impossible to remove.

I suspect that it will take a hardware refresh rather than a software one, so will only apply to 2016+ or 2017+ iDevices, depending on how quickly they get in it in.

And I suspect the restrictions won't be impossible to remove per se, they'll simply be impossible to remove without wiping the user data from the device.

Which, all-in-all is a less secure device than if Apple could trust their own updates, as you're forcing Apple to release products with additional components that can't be updated to fix security related bugs post-release.

 

[metalhead]

Which is the exact reason why the FBI requested the court order: to obtain suspected evidence.

Yes, but there is a big difference between asking someone to turn over evidence, and compelling them to write a computer program in order to access evidence. Precedent is pretty clear that the government is very limited in how much they can compel private citizens and entities to do.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

<----snipped out nonsense---->

You are so far out in left field I can't even be bothered disputing your statements.
Instead of hopping on your high horse of "The fact is..." and "If you had followed..." maybe you should debate on the merits, because I don't think the rest of the people in this conversation are going to just grant you automatic credibility. I certainly won't.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Apple's position is not 'fine' at all. AFAIK there are no legal recourses around a court order. You either comply or face consequences.

The legal recourse is to appeal. Even should they lose, they may conclude that it's less damaging to the company to refuse to comply.

The threat that Apple's facing is a loss of consumer confidence. The difference between wiretapping and hacking a phone is that an individual physically located anywhere in the world can do the latter but not the former. Should the security of Apple phones be compromised, consumers will look to purchase phones from producers whose phones aren't subject to the same security problems.

It looks like what the government is angling for is a world in which any phone sold in the U.S. has to have security vulnerabilities that permit the government to crack it. Since there's no way to get that through Congress, the government is attempting to produce this result using the court system. The problem with the result is that it would more or less force businesses to move major operations out of the U.S. in order to protect proprietary data. I would tend to think that an appellate court is going to see that problem more clearly and put a stop to this nonsense.

 

[Zelig]

The issue is, however, if a company should be expected to do the Justice departments work. If the FBI had been able to decrypt the phone in question, I doubt we would have seen a court order in the first place.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/the-fight-between-the-fbi-and-apple-about-setting-precedent

"[...] former officers with the FBI and NSA acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies have technology that has been used in past intelligence-gathering operations to break into locked phones. The question, they added, was whether it was worthwhile for the FBI to deploy that technology, rather than setting a precedent through the courts."

"There are capabilities that the U.S. government has, that are used for intelligence collecting only and that wouldn’t be used for a criminal matter because they would have to come up in open court,"

'“There is no way on earth the NSA would disclose even to the FBI what they can and cannot do to hack an iPhone,” said Cattanach. “The capabilities of the NSA are a closely guarded secret. The FBI might ask for help but the NSA would say, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ based on my experience.”'

 

[Zelig]

I'm curious to see if Brad Smith says anything further than the RGS blurb.

Brad Smith = Microsoft general counsel? I'm not 100% sure if I have that right, but he's an interesting one too if that's the one, given the Microsoft vs. United States case over the Irish data.

Yeah, former General Counsel, now Chief Legal Officer and President.

Took a week, but MS weighs in:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...it-will-file-an-amicus-brief-to-support-apple

Microsoft Corp. backs Apple Inc. in its fight with the U.S. government over unlocking a terrorist&#8217;s iPhone, said President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith.

The company will file an amicus brief to support Apple next week, Smith said at a congressional hearing to discuss the need for new legislation to govern privacy, security and law enforcement in the age of Internet-based cloud services.

http://www.windowscentral.com/micro...upports-apple-its-iphone-encryption-fight-fbi

Smith added that the government is using laws written in 1911 to support its position, and he brought out an adding machine from that time period showing the kind of technology that was available in that year.

 

[LucyDuke]

I suspect that it will take a hardware refresh rather than a software one, so will only apply to 2016+ or 2017+ iDevices, depending on how quickly they get in it in.

And I suspect the restrictions won't be impossible to remove per se, they'll simply be impossible to remove without wiping the user data from the device.

Which, all-in-all is a less secure device than if Apple could trust their own updates, as you're forcing Apple to release products with additional components that can't be updated to fix security related bugs post-release.

Do you mean a less secure device specifically because it has new hardware security measures, or does that assume the old security has been compromised? I don't see how additional security will degrade security.

 

[Zelig]

Do you mean a less secure device specifically because it has new hardware security measures, or does that assume the old security has been compromised? I don't see how additional security will degrade security.

A less secure device because, hypothetical situation:

Currently:

1. A security flaw to bypass the 10-password-attempt-limit before is discovered.
2. Apple issues a patch and fixes the flaw within a few weeks.

If the entire thing is baked into write-once hardware so that it can't be patched to remove the 10-password-attempted-limit for the FBI:

1. A security flaw to bypass the 10-password-attempt-limit before is discovered.
2. Apple fixes the flaw for new hardware when people buy a new phone next September.


It's decreased security not specifically because of additional hardware security, but because Apple has to operate on the premise that their software patches can't be trusted to be secure.

 

[Agent327]

Meanwhile things have moved on. I was beginning to find Apple's position somewhat peculiar (since no legal action seemed to be undertaken whatsoever, amounting to non-compliance), but apparently there now will be a Congress hearing on the matter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-apple-to-testify-before-congress-on-march-1/

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Meanwhile things have moved on. I was beginning to find Apple's position somewhat peculiar (since no legal action seemed to be undertaken whatsoever, amounting to non-compliance)

Well, other than the 65 page response they filed with the court that issued the order. Outside of that though, definitely no action at all.

 

[Agent327]

I've not read anything mentioning such a report being filed at the court. I have read Apple going public, and even requesting a meeting with the president.

Anywho, in case you missed the news, there will now be a Congressional hearing. Which, to the best of my knowledge, isn't a court of law.

 

[Zkribbler]

Meanwhile things have moved on. I was beginning to find Apple's position somewhat peculiar (since no legal action seemed to be undertaken whatsoever, amounting to non-compliance),

Last I heard, Apple was petitioning to the Court of Appeals for a writ blocking the order. If the trial court hasn't already stayed its order pending the outcome of the writ petition, then the Court of Appeals certainly would have.

One thing I noticed in the 20 years I worked for a trial court: The thicker the petition for a writ, the quicker it will be denied. Apparently, Apple's petition is huge, and so it's deader than a duck in your supermarket's freezer.

A bullet is deadlier than a marshmallow.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I've not read anything mentioning such a report being filed at the court.

A complex search string, such as "apple response" should get you into the neighborhood.