Feds Used 1789 Law To Force Apple, Google To Unlock Phones 63 Times (arstechnica.com) 101
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has been citing a 1789 law, the All Writs Act, to compel Apple to assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernardino killer, Syed Farook. The law allows for judges to issue orders for people or companies to do something despite Congress not passing laws to cover specific instances. According to the Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. government has cited the All Writs Act in 63 cases since 2008 to compel Apple or Google to assist in accessing data stored on an iPhone or Android device. Most of the orders involved Apple. "To the extent we know about the underlying facts, these cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes," said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an ACLU attorney.
Well that proves it (Score:1)
Re:Well that proves it (Score:4, Insightful)
So, phones should be insecure so that the government (and criminals) can get into them?
The same encryption that protects terrorists protects YOUR credit card info and naughty pictures on your phone.
'give the devil the benefit of the law' (Score:1)
So, phones should be insecure so that the government (and criminals) can get into them?
The same encryption that protects terrorists protects YOUR credit card info and naughty pictures on your phone.
I'm reminded of a the 'give the devil the benefit of the law' scene from "A Man for All Seasons":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqReTJkjjg
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Ah, now we know why she turned you down.
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which means Android is a leaky pile of [bleep]?
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What does it matter how old the law is? Does the prohibition against murder somehow expire because the law is old?
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Something to think about, if the terrorists use it, it is because it works. If you somehow think that having the government able to unlock devices at will somehow stops terrorists, well... Obviously you don't understand encryption.
Encryption is just math, anyone with enough understanding in mathematics and app development can implement encryption. The government will need to go after each encrypting entity to prevent easy access to easily encrypted data. But here the kicker, the government is limited in wha
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Re:What is this All-Writs stuff about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, it means the government doesn't give a fuck about the rule of law, and will do anything they can to expand what should be wartime powers to apply it to anything they can fucking think of.
Wake up America, and stop telling the fucking rest of the world you're the champions of liberty and freedom ... you're living in a police state, and most of your idiot citizens think this is a good fucking idea.
Fuck you, America. You have abandoned all of your principles domestically, and have already demonstrated that internationally you will do anything you see fit.
Congratulations. You're not only the enemy of your freedom, but you're the enemy of ours.
America, you are pretty much the enemy of everybody on the fucking planet who does not wish to submit to some horrible state police which is allowed to do anything they wish.
So shut the fuck up, stay the fuck out of our countries, and wallow in your own shit. But we don't give a fuck about what you assholes do anymore. Because you've given up on all semblance of everything you have ever claimed to be.
America is fucked. So just fuck off and stay the hell away from us as you decline into the shithole you've been aspiring to be for the last few decades.
You are now EVERYTHING you used to stand against, and stop fucking pretending otherwise.
Fuck America. If you're going to be some third world banana republic in which the state police can lie cheat and make up laws, you all fucking deserve what you get.
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And remember too that solving the national debt using tax levels that this country had from 1941 through 1980, including when Republican Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford were in office would work. Tax levels on the rich were literally more than twice what they are today, and nobody called Eisenhower, Nixon, or Ford a socialist.
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The US will never be a third world anything. The definition of first world is that a country be the US or one of its allies. Thus, as the definition of first world, the US will always be first world.
Stop using "third world" as a code phrase for "bad". There are a lot of perfectly okay third world countries. There are also a lot of first world shitholes. Like the country you probably live in.
TL;DR: You suck at life.
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Not a chance.
Term limits is a great idea. Corruption is a monotonic function of time in office. ... Oh, you mean a maximum age? While it's a good idea to remove people who have lost their mental abilities, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? No offense, not you. No
There is already an age limit for U.S. Senators: the minimum age is 30, an attempt to get some maturity, wisdom, and stability of character.
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Basically it means the government always holds the trump card. They will always get their way no matter what.
And soon, Trump will hold the government card (or maybe In Soviet Russia...)
The all writs act is probably unconstitutional (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why would it be unconstitutional? I'm not saying it isn't unconstitutional, just curious what the violation would be here.
On the other hand, I am very sick of hearing this "1789 Law" crap in the media. The Constitution is pretty old too, but we still consider it good law, yet this statute is considered trash simply because of its age? Talk about idiocracy.
Re:The all writs act is probably unconstitutional (Score:5, Insightful)
The All Writs Act is basically a blank check for the Courts to order someone (individual or company) to do something. It has not been challenged to the Supreme Court yet, so it is still in force. If it is challenged to the Supreme Court, the challenging party will cite it violates the 14th Amendment (Due Process) and possibly the 13th Amendment (Involuntary Servitude).
Re:The all writs act is probably unconstitutional (Score:5, Informative)
The current all writs act was from 1911 though and supercedes the original. It also has conditions for when it applies. It was used to enable wiretapping and was then upheld by the Supreme Court. The modern cases with Apple and Google use that wiretapping as a precedent.
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The constitution has been amended many times and interpreted many times. It's not the same thing that it started as. And yes, it needed interpretation because it is not clear and unambiguous.
Read the original, it is clunky and disjoint and just plain bad in places. It's a barely workable compromise between groups of people who didn't want to cooperate, federalists and anti-federalists. Two of the original colonies hadn't even signed it when the first congress met, and there were quite a few who felt tha
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The gov ready master key that gave a gov worker or contractor access to any phone in a generation from any gov computer.
http://nypost.com/2016/03/02/f... [nypost.com] (March 2, 2016)
"“The request we got from the government in this case is, ‘Take this tool and put it on a hard drive, send it to the FBI,’ and they’d load it onto th
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"“The request we got from the government in this case is, ‘Take this tool and put it on a hard drive, send it to the FBI,’ and they’d load it onto their computer,” "
Except, that is entirely a lie. The court order is available to be read, why would anyone believe that dribble?
https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]
The court order specifically asks for a one off keyed to a single phone, and signed with Apple's key. This isn't something that can be reverse engineered and modified, the signing certificate protects the software from being modified. They also asked them to load it on the phone, in RAM, not on any permanent storage, so it isn't like they wanted access to the act
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The statement given was for the creation of a method as in "Take this tool and put it on a hard drive". A harddrive ready tool can then be used on any phone of that generation.
Access was the whole idea, a portable, state and federal ready master key to decrypt any generation of phone before any public state or federal court.
The tool that was going to be created was a master key able to decrypt generations of cell phones.
That was the request was for conscripted sof
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I knew James Madison. I worked with James Madison. James Madison was a friend of mine. Believe me when I tell you, James Madison envisioned encrypted electronic devices back then and argued extensively for protection from government decryption of private devices.
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Anything Apple could have done, could have also been done by the FBI hiring another company and by obtaining Apple's source code through a subpoena. Getting Apple to do the work is just simpler and faster.
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Would you rather the FBI asked for the source code and the signing key, or asked Apple to provide the patch? There seem to be many conspiracy nuts on Slashdot nowadays, so imagine what they would have said if the FBI asked for the code and keys first.
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The laws against murder go all the way back to Moses, should we stop using those laws because they are sooo old?
EFF and the All Writs Act (Score:2)
All Writ All Writ All Writ (Score:3)
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Using the All Writs Act doesn't get you things for free, they still would have had to pay Apple just as they pay for other things like wiretaps.
Slavery Still Legal (Score:2)
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How about we make murder legal, it after all dates back to at least Moses.
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I agree, but I was making a point about the age of laws not being really material to how they are used.
makes sense (Score:2)
I mean, to be fair had the founding fathers had any idea of just how terrible drugs are they probably wouldn't have bothered writing the Constitution, right? They were more concerned about petty matters like tyranny, which totally don't even apply today.
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You mean the drugs the drug companies sell? Or the drugs they were using at the time like cocaine, marijuana, heroin and opium?
Come now, the DEA says that marijuana is 500000000000000000 times more potent now than 10 years ago! This isn't George Washington's marijuana, this is *dangerous stuff*.
And you know the DEA wouldn't lie to you to justify their unneeded jobs, right?
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Under this law, can you be compelled... (Score:2)
If so, what happens when they have security systems that evaluate the state of mind of the person entering, and refuses access if they are under any certain kinds of stress, such as if they were being coerced or forced by someone else to let them in. Could this act be interpreted that a person is compelled to *feel* a certain way about assisting law enforcement, and if they didn't feel that way, they could
Ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)
From a point of an European national living in a "police state" this is ridiculous. Why haven't the Congress enacted laws regulating communications companies related to warrants, national security and emergency circumstances, and technical monitoring made by the police under warrant? Is avoiding public discussion so important for the law enforcement that the rule of law and democracy are starting to rot?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not sure what you are asking, but that is the law you seem to be asking about.
Unlock Apple iPhone (Score:1)
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Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department.
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This article is about the All Writs Act being used 63 times to force unlocking of phones. You either didn't read the article, or are to simple to understand that this is entirely relevant to technology. In fact slashdot has a section dedicated to your rights online. If this doesn't belong here then why would they have a YRO section? Your ID# indicates you haven't been here long enough to learn how to read the articles, or know that people on slashdot actually do care about rights and liberties getting erode
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Your ID# indicates you haven't been here long enough to learn how to read the articles
It'd be extremely naive to think that some people don't have more than one account...
Use 1789 tools! (Score:2)
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We used wooden mallets back then you insensitive clod!.
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Did you hammer out a warning?
Did you hammer out love between your brothers and your sisters all over this land?
(Apologies to Lee Hayes & Pete Seeger.)
Bill of Rights is from 1791 (Score:1)
By that logic, your speech is only protected if printed or actually spoken — the only means available, when the Bill of Rights [wikipedia.org] was ratified.
And the Second Amendment only applies to muskets [dailykos.com] (but not to knives and swords [findlaw.com] for some reason).
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Muskets are much closer to today's rifles, than a web-server is to a printing press.
The "deadliness" is irrelevant — the Second Amendment makes no mention of the scale of a weapon. Swords, muskets, and cannon are equally protected by it. But if you insist on using "deadliness" as the criteria for applicability of the Bill of Rights, consider the following:
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And Muskets are far less deadly than assault rifles and pistols...
Far less deadly for the one who stands where the gun is pointing, far more deadly for anyone else.
Worked in GoodWill Hunting (Score:1)
" There is a lengthy legal precedent, Your Honor, going back to 1789, whereby a defendant may claim self- defense against an agent of the government where the act is shown to be a defense against tyranny, a defense of liberty"
New laws are not necessarily better than old ones (Score:2)
Laws that speak in terms of general principles are much more effective than those that are very specific. The more specific the law, the more loopholes there are, and the easier it is to circumvent them with a slightly different technology. Laws that deal with principles might lead to more court interpretation where principles seem to disagree, but they also are longer-lasting in their usefulness.
Not 1st Amendment (Score:1)
Per all suspicions, the purpose of these "warrants" is to gather individuals speech to one another in order to prosecute them (yes, that's texts and emails too says SCOUTS) thus vitiating the right against compelled testimony against ones interests!!
Who would have thunk the Patriot act meant easier DRUG PROSECUTIONS?
Pretty much anyone with a brain.
Thanks Republican'ts!!!
Government is wearing too many hats (Score:2)