Life without a backdoor

What I am hearing about cracking an iPhone is that an update can be applied to a locked and encrypted phone. As the hardware ID is (1) embedded in the phone, (2) not revealed to the user at any time, (3) is part of the encryption key, an update that forces this specific hardware id to set its unlock code to a specified value could enable entry, but to what end?

Apple turned over the perp's unencrypted cloud backup data from six week ago. The perp's notebook and PC likely have lots of info, and the phone service providers have call records. The only other info might be just pictures of cats and regret messages for missing dentist appointments.

The bigger issue is that the FBI has a dozen other locked phones. And then we start to slide. Many police departments have locked phones that are related to crimes that do not conjure terrorism. Doesn't every lawyer on either side of a case want to know what's on a phone? It gets 'slipperier'...

What do you do when when Putin hands you 50 phones to crack? Or the leaders of China or North Korea or Pakistan for fuzzy reasons that dissenters are fomenting revolt.

A pundit references Breitbart's piece on how Apple bends over for China. But what is described there is very different. It is unclear whether Apple  revealed anything about "spyware"... whatever that would be. And accepting that cloud backups are probably best kept on hardware within each nation is a good idea... we really do not want their user's data. And I assure you that no source code or architectural designs left Cupertino or ever will. None of this expresses cracking an individual user's device. Apple did not bend over for China IMHO, they just assured sovereign status. Trust me, the Chinese are not cracking locked devices.

So what does Apple do as the flood of cracking requests builds? Have a Board of Arbitration that decides whose request is worthy and legitimate? Once cracking gets out of the box entirely you might just drop a phone off at a kiosk in your local mall to get it cracked while you shop.

What single galvanizing event would be big enough to really push this over the top? Well, you gotta think that if the current iPhone technology were pervasive in 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald's cell phone data would be damned interesting.

Reflecting on this a bit, the pilots that flew the planes into the Wold Trade Center were so methodical in their planning that there really (AFAIK) isn't much more to know about them or their motives.

Another not-so-silent Spring

Students have been idealists since ancient times, in every country, under every form of government.  Professors merely point out ethics, morals, and humanitarian values as well as ways to apply technologies, marketing, and labor to create wealth.  That balance results in sparse lessons in how to apply greed, deception,  collusion, and aggressive world dominance for “success” in the “real world.”

The student movement is much more genteel than when I graduated in 1970, the not-so-silent spring condemning the Vietnam war and Nixon.  Weathermen, SDS, fires, riots, broken windows…  Bernie’s fans seem to have discovered the way change is intended in this country. If they bring out all the young voters to the polls, it  will scare the bejeesus out of the powers-that-be as much as the women and non-whites did in prior years.

As we discover with superdelegates, even a 20% majority win can be rigged at the first primary. 

"We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, and, in cases where the voters' mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice," Jim Hunt, who headed the commission that considered reforming the party's rules, said at the time, according to Kamarck's book. "We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party."

Note “where the voters' mandate is less than clear”. Like 60/40 is not a mandate…

Bernie and The Donald both have unbelievable baggage… One a socialist Jew and the other a crude reality TV star with a history of bankruptcies.  But note that both have two huge common threads: They renounce the influence of big banks and they both want nothing to do with  superPACs. The Koch brothers musty be going batsy. Maybe they’ll flutter Joni Ernst up to the killing floor…

Trump presents himself as a fascist. Will he work with Congress? Will he listen to the Supreme Court. Who would he appoint if there were a vacancy?  Will he even bother to have a cabinet?  The programs that Trump presents  are expensive and bizarre. Once you get Mexico to build an impenetrable wall, will we arm patrol boats and setup underwater nets, as well do the fence across Canada and getting Trudeau to pay for it?  Once we trash the ACA, will we force those signed up to revert to emergency rooms as write-offs for the hospitals?  Once we tattoo all American Muslims with a crescent on the forehead as well as filter incoming refugees to eat some pork chops and renounce Allah, then what?  Once we carpet bomb the MiddleEast with nukes, what is the follow up?  While the Trumpism “great” seems to map to world military dominance, we already have major military presence in 80 countries and have engendered resentment in virtually every one of those countries. 

The programs that Bernie presents address the health, education, and earning power of citizens, plus a lot a jobs in infrastructure improvements, all funded by a reduced military budget and higher taxes. Then what? OMG!!!

And in the end, I find it unbelievable that either will make it whole way to the White House.  But they sure have laid some planks, and made us all deeply  breath in the stench of SuperPACs,  Bush/Clinton dynasties, and Wall Street/PharmaBro arrogance.  

Regrettably, memories of odors are difficult to persist.