Ride the Lightning

Apple vs. the FBI: Has the Fat Lady Sung?

March 30, 2016

Very doubtful. Information Week reported that the FBI and the DOJ had claimed at least 19 times that there was no way to open that darn phone (belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists) without Apple's help – which was necessary to invoke the All Writs Act. It now turns out that the Department of Justice has been in talks with Israeli security firm Cellebrite about hacking an iPhone 6 for a drug case. Yet the DOJ never mentioned Cellebrite.

Read the whole article because it will raise your blood pressure to read the web of lies constructed by the government. There is no question in my mind that the FBI and DOJ deliberately excluded the NSA (which probably has the capacity to do what we now believe Cellebrite did).

They wanted the legal precedent. Pure and simple. They thought a terrorism case would give it to them – but they were wrong. We know now that there are lot of phones they want to crack, but they've been denied the precedent. I have no doubt they'll be back to try again.

One point is still unclear. News reports have consistently said they have the phone's data, but that it is encrypted. Reporters were told that it would "take a while" to decrypt. I'm still evaluating who has the capacity to do that – if they do. And how long it might take. The most amusing outcome would be if they had the data but couldn't decrypt it. That would be an amusement worth savoring. I suspect we'll hear nothing but silence from the government either because it can't crack it – or there's nothing of evidential value on the phone.

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