Apple Is A Red Herring - FBI Has Some Explaining To Do

I wrote this piece a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd share it.

Privacy and Politics Clash Again

NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden says it's the most important court case of the decade. And it very well could be. At stake is our privacy.

Say what you like about Snowden, he certainly knows a thing or two about government snooping and the secret violations of citizens' privacy on a daily basis.

The case in question is the new battle between Apple and the FBI.

And just to be clear, Apple is the point of the spear on this issue, because the FBI has filed a court order demanding they break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernandino shooters.

Apple has refused and the likes of Alphabet (Google), Facebook and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have all stated that they support Apple's position.

Silicon Valley geeks are standing up against Washington, DC security forces.

And neither side is likely to back down. This is going to get ugly.

As usual, it was Washington's agenda that got this whole confrontation started. For years they have asked computer and tech companies to hand over information on individual's accounts when the person was on trial for a crime.

But Apple has always been uncomfortable with this and so, in its newest operating system, iOS8, it made it so that no one, not even Apple could access the information on the phone.

Bear in mind that most of the information on the iPhones is backed up at 12 hour intervals and stored in the Cloud. It's just the latest calls and texts that are only on the handset.

The FBI have been the agency that has taken the lead to demand Silicon Valley build 'back doors' into their operating systems so law enforcement could access specific information if they feel the need.

You can no doubt see the slippery slope here, if law enforcement is able to get warrants to search your phone and access to everyone's most private information.

The FBI specifically chose this case to go after Apple because it was the perfect moral dilemma – allow the FBI access to the phone of a ISIS-supporting mass murderer, or deny access to protect the information for the sake of everyone.

As usual, of course, now that the headlines have had some play, more details on the story are unfolding and it looks like if the FBI hadn't bungled its initial steps right after the shooting, it could have had access without any bother.

Here are a few technical touchpoints so that the details of what happened don't get too complicated.

When the FBI initially found shooter Syed Farook's phone, they were eager to get the data, so they asked a tech to reset the phone's password.

Farook, had an iPhone 5c (an older model that could have been hacked) but Farook updated his operating system with iOS9, which is unhackable, even by Apple.

Had the FBI not made a bull in a China closet move, it simply had to request that Apple refresh its Cloud to recover the most recent data in the cloud. Then it would be off the phone and it would have been a less onerous request of Apple.

But now, since the FBI screwed up, the data is virtually lost, since Apple can't even break the encryption on its phones and by resetting the password, it wiped out the information on the phone.

What's more, it was discovered that Farook's phone hadn't been backed up since October 19, six weeks before the attack. Maybe Farook overrode the auto back-up, or maybe he hadn't used it. We will never know now.

So once again, the government has hyped a situation and is now using it as an excuse to get access to even more information about its citizenry.

Some are even beginning to think that the government allowed this attack to happen just so it could increase its spying on Americans.

The bottom line is, we can be thankful the FBI's ham-handed MO has gotten no more refined, since we now know that it had all the information it needed but destroyed it. And now it wants to use its incompetence as a pretext for forcing tech firms to give them a backdoor into their most sacred files.

Given its current attitude, is it any surprise no one wants to cooperate with the FBI, or any other branch of government that's looking to strip more privacy from its citizens?

This is why I've written a couple articles recently about how to protect your privacy online now. Onion routers for your internet use (browsing, email, etc) – check out my recent article or go to www.torproject.org. And keep an eye peeled for new blockchain technology that will be able to encrypt our most important transactions.