Feds Might Not Need Apple's Help to Unlock Terrorist's Phone; Say a Third Party Has Shown Them How to Crack iPhone's Security

Hm.

They have to test the method to be sure it works and that it will not cause the terrorist's phone to overwrite itself with gibberish (thus destroying its intelligence value).

[T]he Justice Department unexpectedly told the court just hours before a scheduled hearing that it may not need to force Apple's assistance after all under a little-known law, the All Writs Act, a move that Apple and the rest of Silicon Valley had said would threaten the privacy and security rights of all smartphone owners.

"On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," federal prosecutors said in a filing Monday afternoon. "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."

While this would be a nice momentary dodge, of course it would not resolve the argument we've had over the question. And that question will, certainly, be posed again in the not-too-distant future.

I wonder if this is a real third party, or if this is just the feds' cover story. It occurs to me that if an Apple engineer felt a patriotic leaning towards the government's view of things, he could have made the skeleton key and slipped it to the FBI. And then I suppose the FBI would be obligated to put out a story about an unconnected third party.

posted by Ace at 07:29 PM

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