Law enforcement groups, San Bernardino victims file in support of government in Apple vs FBI row
Following friend of the court filings in support of Apple's stance on encryption, law enforcement groups and the families of six San Bernardino victims issued countering arguments on Thursday backing the government.
In a filing prepared by California attorney Stephen Larson, victims' families say that data on an iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook could prove valuable to the ongoing terror investigation and yield answers for families of victims seeking closure, reports BuzzFeed News, which obtained a copy of the document on Thursday. Larson, who previously served as a federal prosecutor and judge in Los Angeles, was asked by U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker and San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos to file the brief representing government interests.
"Ultimately, this is a situation where no stone can be left unturned," the filing reads. It goes on to argue that while the larger debate over encryption has spiraled into arguments over international precedent, the FBI in the case at hand is looking to combat terrorism at home.
Represented by the brief are Greg Clayborn, James Godoy, Tina Meins, Mark Sandefur, Robert Velasco and Hal Houser. Five of the six families lost loved ones in the attack.
"Apple has defended its stance by invoking the public's right to privacy, but that is not what this case is about," the brief says, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. "This case is about the United States' ability to successfully execute a search warrant ... on an iPhone used by a terrorist."
In a separate joint filing from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and National Sheriffs' Association, interested parties say Apple's stance is "dangerous." Apple, backed by tech firms and rights groups, is resisting a federal court order to assist in an FBI investigation of Farook's iPhone. The order compels Apple to write a version of iOS vulnerable to brute-force passcode attacks, a move Apple argues threatens the security of all devices running its mobile operating system.
"If Apple can refuse lawful court orders to reasonably assist law enforcement, public safety will suffer. Crimes will go unsolved and criminals will go free," the filing reads.
Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym will review the amicus briefs from both sides ahead of a hearing scheduled for March 22.
In a filing prepared by California attorney Stephen Larson, victims' families say that data on an iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook could prove valuable to the ongoing terror investigation and yield answers for families of victims seeking closure, reports BuzzFeed News, which obtained a copy of the document on Thursday. Larson, who previously served as a federal prosecutor and judge in Los Angeles, was asked by U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker and San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos to file the brief representing government interests.
"Ultimately, this is a situation where no stone can be left unturned," the filing reads. It goes on to argue that while the larger debate over encryption has spiraled into arguments over international precedent, the FBI in the case at hand is looking to combat terrorism at home.
Represented by the brief are Greg Clayborn, James Godoy, Tina Meins, Mark Sandefur, Robert Velasco and Hal Houser. Five of the six families lost loved ones in the attack.
"Apple has defended its stance by invoking the public's right to privacy, but that is not what this case is about," the brief says, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. "This case is about the United States' ability to successfully execute a search warrant ... on an iPhone used by a terrorist."
In a separate joint filing from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and National Sheriffs' Association, interested parties say Apple's stance is "dangerous." Apple, backed by tech firms and rights groups, is resisting a federal court order to assist in an FBI investigation of Farook's iPhone. The order compels Apple to write a version of iOS vulnerable to brute-force passcode attacks, a move Apple argues threatens the security of all devices running its mobile operating system.
"If Apple can refuse lawful court orders to reasonably assist law enforcement, public safety will suffer. Crimes will go unsolved and criminals will go free," the filing reads.
Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym will review the amicus briefs from both sides ahead of a hearing scheduled for March 22.
Comments
This one should be part of textbooks on fallacy, it is quite a piece of art.
Encryption
This debate is a defining moment in the tech industry and its impact will be felt for generations. It's implications don't just impact the US but the world and I don't think most people are looking at the long term impact this ruling will have.
At the heart of this debate is if we have a right to security. Not privacy as many have stated but security. In this case security, privacy and freedom line up and it is not the way the FBI wants it.
Paper.
There was a time when we would send mail from person to person using paper. Important documentation was printed out as needed and if we needed to destroy it, there was fire and shredders. NOTE: The government never made a shredding company design and invent an de-shredder. But then we started to shift to digital communications and the government started wetting its lips with the potential treasure trove.
Why? Digital leaves finger prints everywhere it goes. When you send an email the email is routed from server to server to server leaving behind entire copies on computers all over the world. There are wonderful time stamps and trace routes on each copy and it is all in plain text. This is why Hillery's near exclusive use of a personal email for State Department business use is so troubling (and personally why she is unfit to be President). All of those emails are potentially deposited on servers all over the world from Russia to China to Mexico to the US. Email was a wonderful thing for surveillance and Text Messaging. OMG!!! It really became hard to shred documents. It became a feeding frenzy for the NSA and FBI.
Enter the shredder: Encryption. Open sourced and available to the world for free.
Many people think of Encryption as a safe but it isn't. It is a shredding/de-shredding technology. A public key is used to shred data into a billion trillion pieces for transmission (this can be from computer to computer or within a computer). This packet of shredded data can be deposited all over the internet and intercepted by anyone but it is completely unreadable. When it arrives at the intended recipient, a carefully guarded private key is used to de-shred it to usable form. If the private key is lost the document is forever shredded.
Because of the power to the private key, it is important to protect it with multiple levels of security and these designs are hard to get right. In some cases, key pairs are created and destroyed several times a minute. Once a hole is found in the design, they are easily exploited and the encryption serves no purpose. If you engineer in a hole, you destroy the security for EVERYONE using it once the hole is discovered and they always are.
Now this technology is ubiquitous in everything we do on the internet from messaging, searching, banking, finance, investments and commerce. It is the basis for our personal security. It hides our location from jealous ex-lovers. It hides our logins to our banks. It hides our credit card numbers on Amazon. Security, freedom and privacy line up. Even if you are doing nothing unethical or illegal, you have TONS to hide.
It also creates a situation where the FBI's feeding frenzy is being placed on a serious diet and the DOJ is having serious issue with this. They call it "going dark" and they are looking for cases to force silicon valley to create de-shredders that can de-shred any document. Farook's iPhone is the perfect wedge. A home grown terror attack on US soil. Public sympathy like you can't believe. It is the wedge the DOJ is using to force the tech industry to allow surveillance on encryption. This is a line in the sand we can not cross as a planet.
The Clipper Chip and a golden key.
If you engineer in collisions into the shredding tech, these are now found quickly. A key like this will be worth 100's of millions of dollars and there will be a human somewhere motivated by greed. The NSA tried to create an encryption chip with Key Escrow called the Clipper Chip. It failed because it was hacked in months.
With encryption EVERYONE is secure or NO ONE is secure there is no middle ground and there is no room for discussion. It is the math behind encryption. Again, there is NO room for discussion. There is no golden key and there is no magic wand capable of allowing surveillance on encrypted data. If a court precedent is set forcing US tech companies to write code to break their own security designs, it will do a few things:
1) The tech industry will leave to off shore locations.
2) People will loose faith in on-line commerce.
3) People will be much less secure in their digital footprint.
4) Billion's of people will be significantly less secure in their daily lives.
"If Apple can refuse lawful court orders to reasonably assist law enforcement, public safety will suffer. Crimes will go unsolved and criminals will go free," the filing reads.
Define reasonable. Apple is a private company and shouldn't do the work of the govt.
Way to tug on emotions rather than looking at facts, Gov.
Actually it is more than about Apple it is about any company. If the FBI win the case they can then compel any company to do similar things.
So you have these families who are grieving their lost, and we have this idiots in law enforcement tell them Apple is keeping them from getting them answers to the question of Why this happen to their families. Does anyone believe the Police have these families best interest in mind. The fact the families are saying this is about a search warrant show they do not understand the case. The search warrant has been servers, but you can not give someone something you do not have. A search warrant can not require anyone to create what they already do not have.