Apple Case May Cast a Long Shadow
Now that the Department of Justice has withdrawn its lawsuit against Apple in the case concerning the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, it’s clear that the legal and media battles of the last month and a half have produced more questions than they’ve answered. Chief among those remaining questions is this: What was the point? The […]
Comey: NAND Mirroring Doesn’t Work
The FBI director says the prevailing theory about the alternative method the bureau is testing for unlocking the iPhone in the San Bernardino case, a technique called NAND mirroring, “doesn’t work”. Speaking at a press conference Thursday with the United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch regarding the terror attacks in Brussels, FBI Director James Comey […]
FBI-Apple Case Could Mean Uncertain Future for Users
The news this week that the Department of Justice has found a third party to help it unlock a contested iPhone without Apple’s compelled help–and subsequently asked to cancel a court hearing on the matter–has been hailed as a victory both for Apple and its users. While that may be true, at least for the […]
FTC Warns App Developers Over Use of Audio Tracking Code
The Federal Trade Commission is warning a dozen developers about some code they’ve included in their apps that can surreptitiously listen to unique audio signals from TVs in the background and build detailed profiles of what consumers are watching. The technology, produced by a company called SilverPush, is used to track users across devices and the […]
FBI Victory in Apple Case Could Backfire
The FBI has been pushing hard, both publicly and privately, for Apple to help it unlock an alleged terrorist’s iPhone by creating a compromised version of iOS, and it may well end up winning that battle. And while that may set a precedent for future law enforcement operations in the United States, it may wind up […]
Apple Says FBI’s Request for Backdoor is ‘Offensive’
In a new brief in its ongoing legal battle with the FBI and Department of Justice, Apple said that the government does not have any legal authority to force the company to create a backdoored version of iOS and that the FBI has “belittled” Apple’s concerns about the danger of creating such software. In the […]
WhatsApp May Be Next Front in Crypto Battle
The United States government, still entangled with Apple in the battle over an encrypted iPhone, has taken on another big opponent in its efforts to access encrypted communications: WhatsApp. The hyper-popular mobile messaging app is, in some parts of the world with poor phone coverage, the default communications mechanism. Now owned by Facebook, WhatsApp employs end-to-end […]
Apple-FBI Case Gets Nasty
The federal government and Apple both have dropped any semblance of civility in their battle over an encrypted iPhone, with the Department of Justice calling Apple’s arguments “corrosive” and threatening to demand the iOS source code and its master signing key for the operating system, and Apple’s lawyers calling the government “desperate”. The government on […]
EFF Says Bills Requiring Vendor Decryption of Phones Could be Unconstitutional
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has come out in opposition of a proposed California bill that would require Apple and other phone manufacturers to be able to decrypt the contents of any device they sell in the state. The California bill was introduced in January by Assemblyman Jim Cooper and it is designed to force vendors […]