Apple participated in search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
As part of testimony related to the ongoing San Bernardino iPhone encryption debate, Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell on Tuesday told members of the House Judiciary Committee that the company offered technical assistance to investigators searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 after the plane was declared missing in 2014.
Sewell offered the comments as background to a question posed by Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) concerning Apple's response procedures in the event of a perceived emergency. average response time to
"In the instance that there's a terrorist that has put the location of a nuclear bomb on the phone, and he dies, how long would take Apple to develop the technology to tell us where that nuclear bomb was, or would Apple not be able to develop that technology to tell us in a short period time," Richmond asked.
As per protocol, Apple would first conduct a top-down audit of all data surrounding a particular phone, which in this hypothetical situation is a device loaded with highly sensitive information vital to national security. While not specifically mentioned, Sewell is likely referring to iPhone backups and other relevant data stored in the cloud, information the company has ready access to as is willing to hand over to government official if served a proper warrant.
Sewell notes the past 25 years have brought great change to the digital security landscape, especially with respect to what data law enforcement agencies can access. However, Apple does have procedures in place to handle emergency situations.
"When the Malaysia Airline[s] went down -- within one hour of that plane being declared missing -- we had Apple operators cooperating with telephone providers all over the world, with the airlines and with the FBI to try to find a ping, to try to find some way we could locate where that plane was," Sewell said.
These emergency protocols could also be activated in a missing persons case. Earlier in the hearing Richmond referenced the murder of Brittney Mills, a Baton Rouge resident shot in her apartment last year seemingly by someone she knew. Investigators attempted to mine Mills' iPhone 5 for evidence but were thwarted by an iOS 8 passcode and full disk encryption. Apple is embroiled in a controversial debate over a similar matter linked to an iPhone used by San Bernardino terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook.
Sewell offered the comments as background to a question posed by Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) concerning Apple's response procedures in the event of a perceived emergency. average response time to
"In the instance that there's a terrorist that has put the location of a nuclear bomb on the phone, and he dies, how long would take Apple to develop the technology to tell us where that nuclear bomb was, or would Apple not be able to develop that technology to tell us in a short period time," Richmond asked.
As per protocol, Apple would first conduct a top-down audit of all data surrounding a particular phone, which in this hypothetical situation is a device loaded with highly sensitive information vital to national security. While not specifically mentioned, Sewell is likely referring to iPhone backups and other relevant data stored in the cloud, information the company has ready access to as is willing to hand over to government official if served a proper warrant.
Sewell notes the past 25 years have brought great change to the digital security landscape, especially with respect to what data law enforcement agencies can access. However, Apple does have procedures in place to handle emergency situations.
"When the Malaysia Airline[s] went down -- within one hour of that plane being declared missing -- we had Apple operators cooperating with telephone providers all over the world, with the airlines and with the FBI to try to find a ping, to try to find some way we could locate where that plane was," Sewell said.
These emergency protocols could also be activated in a missing persons case. Earlier in the hearing Richmond referenced the murder of Brittney Mills, a Baton Rouge resident shot in her apartment last year seemingly by someone she knew. Investigators attempted to mine Mills' iPhone 5 for evidence but were thwarted by an iOS 8 passcode and full disk encryption. Apple is embroiled in a controversial debate over a similar matter linked to an iPhone used by San Bernardino terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook.
Comments
Btw, terrorist and nuclear bomb are what NSA suppose to track first, not the damn phone.
And let the Mills case be a warning. Use iCloud and set your iPhone to do regular backups.
As others have said many times before, Apple can then decrypt that backup and hand over relevant info to law enforcement.
Make it easy for everyone to clean up your mess. Use iCloud backups.
That would be because even the FBI's 20th Century forensics mechanisms are enough to decrypt Android phones!
As for backdoors on Android phones, to paraphrase Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body - Android is not a backdoor virgin!
My guess is that it is actually the network operators who could be helpful, not Apple, but if you know of a network of secret Apple satellites in obit that can get a signal from an iPhone directly without going through a network operator, do tell, as that would be fascinating.
And I am not referring in particular to the San Bernardino case, which could have it's merits. But the agencies know once, as well as Apple, that once the door is opened, there's no way back.
A government that dreams about, and already exerted (NSA anyone?), TOTAL AND GLOBAL control of it's citizens and citizens and politicians of other countries smells so strongly "dictatorship" that I fear for the future of the US. And, as a consequence, of us all.
http://www.edreams.com/blog/in-flight-wifi/
Apple may not be able to get any more info after a crash, but what if the plane had not crash yet. Or maybe if Apple can determine the last location of an iDevice on board, it might help locate the crash site.
I wasn't referring specifically to this Malaysia flight, but that Apple could in fact help where the telecoms (and maybe Android devices) couldn't because it is a possibility to get a network connection in flight, even if a cellular connection is not available. And even if Malaysia had WiFi, I'm sure the pilot would have turned it off, like he did the all the other electronic devices that could have tracked this plane, way before he took it off course.
As for WiFi, once again, it is the providers and operators of the infrastructure who would be in the front seat and best placed to provide assistance, but that is a pure fantasy-land scenario anyway. The primary mechanism for locating an Aircraft is it's transponders. If those aren't working, I doubt anyone's surfing the internet at 12 k meters as I doubt the WiFi would be working either.
And how would the terrorist have the location of the bomb in his phone? I love these ticking time-bomb scenarios. It's always bombs and missing children, missing children and bombs.