[NewsPoster]

Late Saturday night, the FBI confirmed that it was working "cooperatively" with the San Bernadino information technology department to try and undo the damage done by the county or department when the iCloud password on the iPhone 5c belonging to the county and used by shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was reset, preventing the agency from obtaining a backup of the work iPhone's contents. The statement issued by the FBI to "address misleading reports" claims that the agency's failure to unlock the device properly, coupled with the enterprise management misconfiguration of the device in the first place, has no bearing on the court order invoking the two-century-old All Writs Act that the FBI is leaning on to force Apple to do its bidding.

Clarifying the chain of events to Ars Technica (with the same text received this morning by MacNN), the FBI says that "since the iPhone 5C was locked when investigators seized it during the lawful search on December 3, a logical next step was to obtain access to iCloud backups for the phone in order to obtain evidence related to the investigation in the days following the attack. The FBI worked with San Bernardino County to reset the iCloud password on December 6, as the county owned the account and was able to reset the password in order to provide immediate access to the iCloud backup data."

The release notes that the mishandled reset of the iCloud account by government authorities "does not impact Apple's ability to assist with the the court order under the All Writs Act."

On Tuesday, a US magistrate judge ordered Apple to comply with FBI requests to help the law enforcement agency get into a Farook's county-owned iPhone. Apple is not be required to override the passcode itself, but is being compelled to develop and give the FBI software that would prevent the iPhone from erasing itself after a number of unsuccessful login attempts (and reduce the amount of time allowed between passcode attempts), allowing the agency to brute-force unlock the iPhone at will. A "Message to Our Customers" from CEO Tim Cook advises Apple has already complied with some of the FBI's demands (which the bureau has since confirmed) relating to the case, but will not produce a workaround of important security aspects of iOS that "would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession."

The FBI also claims in its late Saturday press release that "through previous testing, we know that direct data extraction from an iOS device often provides more data than an iCloud backup contains.  Even if the password had not been changed and Apple could have turned on the auto-backup and loaded it to the cloud, there might be information on the phone that would not be accessible without Apple's assistance as required by the All Writs Act order, since the iCloud backup does not contain everything on an iPhone.  As the government's pleadings state, the government's objective was, and still is, to extract as much evidence as possible from the phone."

Still unclear is why the FBI believes there is any evidence of interest on the county-owned work iPhone. Unlike his personal smartphone, the work phone was not destroyed by Farook prior to the attack, suggesting there was little if anything not work-related on the device. The FBI still as of yet has not declared what specifically it is seeking on the phone, other than the possibility of simply more information about the shooting, which ended in the death of the perpetrator.

The Department of Justice has already declared that they have the contents of the iCloud backup from mid-October, subject's movements, the list of called phone numbers, and other data collected by previous subpoena from Apple and the wireless carrier attached to the phone. Apple is challenging the judge's order in a higher court, where the FBI may finally have to provide any reasoning behind its view that cracking Farook's work iPhone is both vital and urgent in the investigation. It has not, thus far, linked any suspicions to the metadata it has already obtained from the device, and appears to some critics to be cynically exploiting the case to weaken privacy protections for all smartphones and other such devices.

[MikeXRyan]

The FBI wants Apple to provide them with software that will allow them to bypass the security built in to iOS, they don't want Apple to unlock Farook's iPhone because they want the ability to do it themselves. What Apple can't do is provide them with software for a specific phone. If they provide software it would have to be software that would bypass security on ANY iPhone (iOS was built that way) and that's what the FBI really wants. They would share that software with every law enforcement agency including the NYPD who really wants the ability to break into iPhones. That would result in some rogue employee/officer to sell that software to the criminal element and soon every iPhone user would be faced with empty bank accounts, photo ransoms, published email, you name it, whatever your iPhone holds.

China has introduced legislation that will require Apple to turn over the same such software to them to protect their citizens but that would give China the ability to hack into any American (or world-wide) iPhone. Russia is also asking for the software to "protect their own Russian citizens".

So you can see where this is going. If Apple is forced to provide the software then we are all lose our privacy and I, for one, am not in favor of that.

[Steve Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by MikeXRyan 

it would have to be software that would bypass security on ANY iPhone (iOS was built that way) and that's what the FBI really wants.
....
That would result in some rogue employee/officer to sell that software to the criminal element and soon every iPhone user would be faced with empty bank accounts, photo ransoms, published email, you name it, whatever your iPhone holds.

China has introduced legislation that will require Apple to turn over the same such software to them to protect their citizens but that would give China the ability to hack into any American (or world-wide) iPhone. Russia is also asking for the software to "protect their own Russian citizens".

So you can see where this is going. If Apple is forced to provide the software then we are all lose our privacy and I, for one, am not in favor of that.

Exactly! Well said. And, I think it's even worse than that, as I don't think the government itself is trustworthy, with good intentions. They'd basically like an easy way to just sit back and let AI software routines flag people to keep an eye on... whatever people, for whatever reason.

Today terrorists, tomorrow, people who don't hold a particularly politically-correct position on some topic, the next day, a potential whistle-blower or someone who might be a threat to some cash-cow the politician has going.

(And, if you don't think that's possible or likely, as I've said in other threads, go listen to Congressional Dish podcast and actually hear what Congress is doing each month! It will change your mind on that pretty quickly. No conspiracy theory needed, as the 'theory' part drops off pretty quickly when you hear them actually doing it.)

[DiabloConQueso]

"two-century-old All Writs Act"

The All Writs Act has been modified and clarified several times throughout the centuries, and a handful of times in the 20th century.

While I disagree with its use in this particular case, it's misleading to insinuate that it's some outdated statute that the FBI dug out of some dusty, old archives in order to try and force Apple to comply.

There are plenty of laws, mandates, and statutes we abide by today that are centuries old that no one writes "centuries-old" before. Murder and theft, for example: "OJ Simpson today was charged with violating the centuries-old law of murder."

[Charles Martin]

Fair enough, but our point is that the FBI can't find anything more relevant than an extremely loose interpretation of a "last resort" type of law, which speaks to the weakness of their case.

[jimoase]

Look into the history of John Wilkes, the number 45 and the resulting All Writs Act in our laws.

Apple is third party who produces a legal product. For the government via a judge to have sway over how Apple creates and markets legal products the government would have to nationalize a private company. In none of the enumerated powers We the People have given to any level of government is there the power to nationalize private industry.

Then set aside what happened to GMC and banks and... the list grows because it was for our own good. We will return to the Constitution later.

As JFK noted when he started the New Frontier Program, ignorant people are easily deceived. LBJ was listening and created the Great Society complete with Model Cities of what can be done with our most prosperous cities using centrally controlled education when handed to education experts. Today Detroit, Camden, Newark and Oakland are infamous rather than famous as they once were. Today 90% of our nation's rural communities are in decay and dying. Governments are not to be trusted with anything important.