Last Wednesday, Apple rejected the FBI's 'request' to build a back door to the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. The iPhone apparently has an auto-erase function which destroys all of its encrypted data if it detects a hacker. Now, the DOJ has asked a federal judge to compel Apple to comply, adding, "Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack by obeying this court's [previous order], Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order." The outrage! So according to the DOJ, Apple is essentially siding with the terrorists. Spoken like true authoritarian fascists. "Either give up all your freedoms, or you're with the terr'ists! who want to take away your freedoms!"

Now, in a new development, Apple is saying that the phone in question had its password changed within 24 hours of being in government custody. They say that this prevents them from getting backup information.

RT reports:

Exactly who or how the Apple ID password was changed is unconfirmed, but in court filings, the US Department of Justice alleged that the San Bernardino Health Department, "in an attempt to gain access to some information in the hours after the attack, was able to reset the password remotely, but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup."

However, Apple executives only learned about the change after proposing four solutions for recovering the encrypted data, all without having to compromise security for millions of customers with a so-called "backdoor" that authorities are pressuring the company to make.

One idea involved connecting the iPhone to a known Wi-Fi network in order to prompt an iCloud backup, but Apple engineers failed in their attempts to do so, and that's when they realized the password change.

Does anyone else detect a slight hint of fish? Forgive me for being a tad conspiracy-minded, but the SB shootings already stink to high heaven. To me at least, it looks at least possible that the FBI already got access to the phone, filled it with planted 'evidence', possibly added the encryption themselves, changed the password, and is now faking an inability to access that data. So they are compelling Apple to create a backdoor that would further compromise the security of every iPhone on the planet. Two birds - another successful false flag, another freedom down the toilet - one stone! Impossible to say for sure, but I wouldn't put it past the FBI. They are, after all, the ones responsible for practically all 'terror incidents' on U.S. soil!

Also on Friday, Apple recommended Congress resolve the escalating legal fight over a federal judge's order compelling the company to assist the FBI in breaking through the encryption of the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorist mass shooters. Apple insists that would require creating a whole new operating system that would also serve as a key to unlock all encrypted protection on iPhones sold worldwide.

Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook severely criticized the court order, writing in an open letter that the demand "has implications far beyond the legal case at hand."

Not that Apple doesn't already 'cooperate' with snoops in all sorts of other ways... But you can really get the measure of a person by their response to this news. Just look at all the people on Twitter criticizing Cook's decision. Apparently these people really believe their freedom will be protected by giving up their freedoms.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai also chimed in, after Snowden questioned whether Google had already chosen the side of the snoops.


Security expert John McAfee recently made the U.S. government an offer they can't reasonably refuse:

"I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet," McAfee wrote in an op-ed on Business Insider. "I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team. ... This is a black day and the beginning of the end of the US as a world power," McAfee wrote in his piece, which reads like a kudos to Apple's Tim Cook, who refused to assist the feds.
...
"After years of arguments by virtually every industry specialist that back doors will be a bigger boon to hackers and to our nation's enemies than publishing our nuclear codes and giving the keys to all of our military weapons to the Russians and the Chinese, our government has chosen, once again, not to listen to the minds that have created the glue that holds this world together," McAfee wrote.

However, McAfee says he has a solution - his team of talented prodigies, which the FBI, unlike the Russians or Chinese, would never hire just because of their lifestyle and "24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face."
...
"I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact," he wrote.

Wrapping up his piece, McAfee wrote: "If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America."

So what do you think the chances are that the authorities will accept McAfee's offer? I know, rhetorical question...

Finally, there's this quote from Snowden that pretty much sums it up:

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

http://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/you-it-act-ii-scene-vii-all-worlds-stage/

Microsoft founder Bill Gates supports both sides of the debate between the FBI and Apple over unlocking the iPhone at the heart of the San Bernardino shooting case ‒ but only in this "specific case," he says. And that puts him at odds with Silicon Valley.

At issue is the work cellphone of Syed Rizwan Farook ‒ who, along with his wife, carried out the December terrorist attack in California. The FBI ‒ supported by a judge's ruling ‒ and the Department of Justice want Apple to help it hack into the phone. The tech company insists that this will "unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers," as CEO Tim Cook wrote in an open letter.

The debate has exploded into the public sphere, with the giants of Silicon Valley squaring off against the federal law enforcement agency. On Tuesday, Gates became the latest big name in tech to weigh in on the issue.

"This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case," Gates told the Financial Times.

"It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records," he continued. "Let's say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said, 'Don't make me cut this ribbon because you'll make me cut it many times'."

In publishing the interview, the Financial Times trumpeted that Gates "backs FBI iPhone hack request."

His stance separates him from the rest of the technology industry, the paper noted, including from Microsoft's viewpoint on the issue. The Seattle-based software company joined the fight as part of the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, a group of IT heavyweights - including Facebook, Yahoo, Dropbox and LinkedIn - calling for changes in "the practices and laws regulating government surveillance of individuals and access to their information."


Gates clarified his position later Tuesday morning, saying he was "disappointed" in how his position had been reported by the Financial Times.

"That doesn't state my view on this," he said on 'Bloomberg Go'. "The extreme view that government always gets everything, nobody supports that. Having the government be blind, people don't support that."

Gates sees the need to not only strike a balance between the government's needs and those of Apple and of Americans, but also a need for a discussion of that balance to occur in the public sphere.

"You don't just want to take the minute after a terrorist event and swing that direction, nor do you want to completely swing away from government access when you have some abuse," he said. "You want to strike that balance that the United States leads and setting an example."


Apple, through Cook, has accused the FBI of asking the company to set "a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone's civil liberties" by creating an encryption "backdoor" that would allow not just law enforcement to hack its iPhones, but others with more nefarious intents.

For its part, the FBI denies wanting to "set a master key loose on the land," Director James Comey wrote in a statement on Sunday that concentrated on the victims of the attack, saying: "we can't look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don't follow this lead."

Most of Silicon Valley has come down squarely on Apple's side of the debate.

"I don't think building back doors is the way to go, so we're pretty sympathetic to Tim [Cook, CEO] and Apple," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told an audience at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain on Monday.


Google GEO Sundar Pichai showed his support for his competitor in a series of tweets last Wednesday.

"We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders," Pichai tweeted. "But that's wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent."

Yet the public tends to side more with the FBI than with the tech industry: A little more than half of Americans (51 percent) say that Apple should help the FBI unlock the iPhone, as opposed to 38 percent who say it should not, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Monday that queried 1,002 adults by phone.


Regardless of the outcome of "this specific case," Gates hopes that the debate will lead to legal changes that are sufficient for both sides: That the government will be able to enforce taxation, stop crime and investigate terror threats, but that there will be laws outlining how and when that information can be accessed.

http://www.rt.com/usa/333403-bill-gates-san-bernardino-iphone/

Microsoft founder Bill Gates supports both sides of the debate between the FBI and Apple.

Of course he does. Everytime I see his name or face I feel sick.

last i heard, he was still giving away free injections in Afica...free shots, but no free food...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fbi-order-apple-san-bernardino-encryption-hacking-backdoor-technical-explainer

<<<<<<<<<<This is the latest chapter in the FBI's fight against Apple and encryption, which started when Apple implemented new security and encryption features with the launch of the iPhone 6 in September of 2014. At the time, Apple said it wouldn’t be able to unlock phones anymore—even if the authorities came knocking at their door with a warrant—because it just didn’t have the technical means. But the US government has since been testing the legal boundaries of what it can force Apple, and by extension any other tech company, to do, mainly using the questionable legal authorities granted by a 227-year-old law.

And this time, it might have devised a way to prove that Apple does have the technical means to help cops and feds when they have to access data on a locked device.

At stake is whether a company can be legally compelled to sabotage the security of its own software

In the case of the San Bernardino shooter, rather than telling Apple to break the encryption protecting the device, which is an older iPhone 5C running iOS 9, the order would force the company to build a special version of its software that removes protections against anyone guessing your passcode millions of times until it gets it right—what’s technically known as a “brute-force” attack. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Piece by piece the reasons/excuses boil down to this...1) Invoke an internal and external
threat.
2) Secret Prisons, where torcher
takes place.
3) survalance on ordinary citizens.
4). Develope a paramilitary force.
5) Infiltrate citizen groups.
6) Detain and release ordinary citizens.
7) Target key Individuals.
8) Restrict the Press.
9) Recast Critizism as Espionage,
and Dissident as Treason.
10) Subvert the rule of law.
Then what, WWIII?

Apple developing unhackable iPhone technology, report says
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/02/25/apple-developing-unhackable-iphone-technology-report-says.html?cmpid=NL_SciTech/

*Embedded links & video 03:31*

If Apple keeps this up I'm gonna buy their phones!