I saw a post earlier which indicated that just over 50% of American people surveyed think Apple should unlock the phone...

That's also an intentionally misleading framing of the question, because the issue isn't *one* phone.

If the survey question read "do you think Apple should build a system to break the encryption on all iphones?", I imagine you'd get a rather different response, even from a random sampling of the general public.

Yea I saw that too and I'm not too surprised to be honest. The majority of the public probably believes "Huh? It's just one phone why ain't they unlocking it? Apple be bad. They like terrorist.". The average public is pretty easy to fool (just look at any recent elections and the amount of crap slung by all politicians).

We are talking about a country where someone like Trump is still in the race for presidence with all the ridicolous stunts he has made in the last few weeks. The fact he has already shown his support for the non-Apple side only makes it more obvious how open a lot of US citizens are for listening to facts instead of jumping to conclusions.

Sad thing is, same thing could happen in almost every country in the world. If the human race goes extinct one day, its not because of a meteor or something like that... they most probably loose the mental ability to breathe as a species...

Yea I saw that too and I'm not too surprised to be honest. The majority of the public probably believes "Huh? It's just one phone why ain't they unlocking it? Apple be bad. They like terrorist.". The average public is pretty easy to fool (just look at any recent elections and the amount of crap slung by all politicians).

We are talking about a country where someone like Trump is still in the race for presidence with all the ridicolous stunts he has made in the last few weeks. The fact he has already shown his support for the non-Apple side only makes it more obvious how open a lot of US citizens are for listening to facts instead of jumping to conclusions.

Sad thing is, same thing could happen in almost every country in the world. If the human race goes extinct one day, its not because of a meteor or something like that... they most probably loose the mental ability to breathe as a species...

Yea I agree with you. How Trump is still in the running, let alone leading, is a mystery to me, although my suspicion is that most people have abandoned the Republican party and the ones that remain are a small subset of people who have very strange beliefs indeed. I'm not surprised about Trump jumping on the anti Apple bandwagon, cause his previous statements have been far more ridiculous to say the least. He's one of those people who has no real platform and is instead relying on people's hatred to win votes.

But we digress.

I saw a post earlier which indicated that just over 50% of American people surveyed think Apple should unlock the phone...

That's also an intentionally misleading framing of the question, because the issue isn't *one* phone.

If the survey question read "do you think Apple should build a system to break the encryption on all iphones?", I imagine you'd get a rather different response, even from a random sampling of the general public.

That may be true, but as it stands to reason, I don't think we if Apple can indeed unlock one single phone without building a generalized solution. I think that is what's really missing in this entire debate.

Also, let's not forget the FBI had a back door entrance.

They used it for quite some time.

The phone was actively syncing with iCloud, they could have installed any number of existing applications that let them get control that way. But they chose not to use one of the existing attacks.

For reasons they never really explained, the FBI investigators changed passwords on the account and broke the sync.

Now they're demanding Apple help them build this tool that helps them brute force the password. Everyone is watching.

The key is that this is software and hardware, hundreds of millions of machines that are all identical and susceptible to the same software tools.

New York has already stated that if the FBI can force the precedent, they've got nearly 200 phones they want the treatment for, which courts have so far denied because it isn't something that exists. Certainly many other police agencies around the US would also jump in that line. Then there are all the other governments around the globe, they're going to have their own court battles, and so far they've all seemingly gone along with Apple's line that there is nothing to be done. If this tool gets created, there are all of those too.

That is part of why this is such an important case.

If it were a case of handing over something that existed, with a specific warrant or subpoena for the specific thing to be surrendered, that would be different and apple should comply.

This is a case of building a tool that works on hundreds of millions of devices, a tool that does not exist, and the government (through the FBI) are trying to force them to build it against their wishes. That is a radically different issue, and one I believe this initial court got very wrong.

Ultimately, if Apple can hack their own firmware, the most worrisome vulnerability is corporate espionage: An employee with access selling their signing key(s) and firmware source(s) to whoever pays them.

If you want security past the point where this is possible, the devices have to protect themselves from *everyone* while locked, even preventing signed firmware from being installed.

If you want security past the point where this is possible, the devices have to protect themselves from *everyone* while locked, even preventing signed firmware from being installed.

Possibly not too late for the iPhone 7...

If you want security past the point where this is possible, the devices have to protect themselves from *everyone* while locked, even preventing signed firmware from being installed.

Possibly not too late for the iPhone 7...

I am pretty sure the FBI will ask Apple to crack that too....

"Hand over the key to the damned phone, will yah? We need the data on it NAO!"

"Well Sir, we appreciate that you want to have access to the data on the phone but sadly there is no way to get access. The phone is locked so every way to get in or install anything on it will destroy all the data on the phone and render it permanently unusable"...

"Well doh, you built the phone, so certainly you have a way in?"

"No, we specifically built it so not even Apple can get to the data"

"But.... WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"

"Because we take our customers privacy serious and ..."

"privacy? What is that? I demand the key! Hand it over NAO!"

They should just ask the Chinese for access to their backdoors in to the phone hardware... ;)

"Because we take our customers privacy serious and ..."

Apple may care about their customer's "privacy" only insofar as it affects Apple's bottom line. But make no mistake, Apple is delighted to pry into every aspect of your phone themselves, if it makes them more money.

Apple may care about their customer's "privacy" only insofar as it affects Apple's bottom line. But make no mistake, Apple is delighted to pry into every aspect of your phone themselves, if it makes them more money.

They've actually spent an awful lot of time *not* doing that at this point.

Yes, it may have started as a way to differentiate themselves from Google et al, but at this point, it's a pretty entrenched policy, and you don't walk those back without incurring serious costs to your reputation.