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There is a congressional hearing about Apple having to give the FBI a backdoor to iPhone. The FBI cannot crack the encryption because it auto erases after several attempts. We can get into that phone with our computing power, if [Apple] takes off the auto-erase and the delay between guesses function So a court compelled Apple to give the FBI the backdoor - and Apple refused on the grounds of "dangerous precedent". The FBI director admits that there would be some "international implications" because this case will be snowballing around the world.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren said it like this:

it may be that the alternative is a world where nothing is private,

Sen. Ron Wyden - member of the Senate Intelligence Committee commented on the international implications:

Why in the world would our government want to give repressive regimes in Russia and China a blueprint for forcing American companies to create a backdoor?

Why indeed!

The conflict of interest is always Terrorism vs Privacy in these cases.

The important distinction is not what the FBI wants or does not want to do - but what they should be able to do with the phones. History has shown that the good will alone is not enough.
It seems that Congress may end up legislating to decide the fate of Apple - using old stuff from "1789" was hardly meant for the computer age (In principle yes - but not in specifics).

More here

Sometimes makes you wonder if that incident in California with that guy and his girlfriend was actually planted/staged by the FBI to lead to this. Is very odd that a Field Office was few blocks away, vehicle used / weapon is similar to Gov standard issues, a training excersice was happening at the same time that prompted the fast response....

I am telling ya... coincidence or just bad timing.... makes you go hmmmmmmmm.

It looked like some Cowboy going bananas - but you have to call it terrorism to get those juicy backdoors.....

Update:
While we are waiting for the court proceedings: The Tech companies are all heavily supporting Apple but The FBI has more people on their side.

51 percent say that Apple should unlock that phone, while 38 percent are against it.

The implications are hard to grasp for non techs and in all fairness: The government has not exactly informed about their data retention in the past, so where should they get the informed views from?

Since Snowden there has been a certain attention around the issues involved though so the numbers above are somewhat surprising.

A couple of hours ago, from the beeb:

Apple being 'corrosive' and 'false' in iPhone row, US says -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-35781044

Yes they are under a heavy propaganda attack these days.

I guess their prior willing cooperativeness has thoroughly backfired, so in some ways they can blame themselves. On the other hand you gain credibility these days by being attacked by those agencies.

Being "extremely cooperative" with them makes people run these days.

I'm wondering how long they'll hold their ground.

I posted this in another thread, but think it worth a mention here as well (and this is where I thought that I was actually posting it to lol).

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... on-privacy

The "blurb" on it can be seen here.

The good thing is that it seems that the Americans are swinging in favour of Apple as more information is revealed:
https://recode.net/2016/03/09/new-poll- ... ion-fight/

Yes, that was the good thing that stood out in The Guardian's article as well.
It's not just Amerikans, either. So cool.

The FBI has filed a motion to vacate this case, but not because they were wrong in filing in the first place.

“On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking [shooter Syed] Farook’s iPhone,” the motion says. “Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. (“Apple”) set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case.”

See more at: FBI Vacates Today’s Apple Hearing here.

It seems that Apple is afraid that the hack the FBI did will be leaked...

Read more here.