<story><title>Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism</title><url>http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470347719/encryption-and-privacy-are-larger-issues-than-fighting-terrorism-clarke-says</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ptaipale</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;the perps are dead, did not appear to be part of some organized group&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A reasonable reason for inquiry here is to actually try to make sure if they were part of some organized group. &amp;quot;Appear not to be&amp;quot; is not quite enough.&lt;p&gt;This is a valid reason to investigate even if they are dead. How did they get radicalized, etc.&lt;p&gt;Not that it is a good enough reason to enforce breaking of encryption in the way proposed, but in a murder inquiry,  privacy of the perps has to give way.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>&amp;gt; No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. They&amp;#x27;re not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s quite the quote, especially given his history of employment.&lt;p&gt;The weirdest thing about this whole cell-phone saga to me is that the perps are dead, did not appear to be part of some organized group and that very little could be done to them that hasn&amp;#x27;t been done already based on evidence found on the phone.&lt;p&gt;Then there is the bit that a lot of the information that is on the phone is &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; already in the log files of the carriers. It&amp;#x27;s as if that phone somehow magically is going to yield an entirely new class of information that may not even exist in the first place.&lt;p&gt;To me it has been evident from day one that this is not about this phone or the data that&amp;#x27;s on it but just about the legal precedent, getting it in black-and-white from the former head of counter terrorism is quite an indictment of his successors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danieldk</author><text>&lt;i&gt;A reasonable reason for inquiry here is to actually try to make sure if they were part of some organized group. &amp;quot;Appear not to be&amp;quot; is not quite enough.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;For a country that kills based on metadata[1], it seems quite far-fetched that they couldn&amp;#x27;t map out potentially interesting connections using just metadata.&lt;p&gt;Also, it would be pretty dumb to put any revealing data on a work phone with iCloud backups enabled (which is just not accessible due to the FBI&amp;#x27;s mistakes).&lt;p&gt;At any rate, this discussion is quite besides the point. Permitting this phone to be unlocked (or the hundred or so other phones mentioned) will open the floodgates for questionable regimes and a hunt for Apple&amp;#x27;s private key (more automation to handle requests will reduce security).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nybooks.com&amp;#x2F;daily&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;we-kill-people-based-metadata&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nybooks.com&amp;#x2F;daily&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;we-kill-people-based...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Encryption, Privacy Are Larger Issues Than Fighting Terrorism</title><url>http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470347719/encryption-and-privacy-are-larger-issues-than-fighting-terrorism-clarke-says</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ptaipale</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;the perps are dead, did not appear to be part of some organized group&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A reasonable reason for inquiry here is to actually try to make sure if they were part of some organized group. &amp;quot;Appear not to be&amp;quot; is not quite enough.&lt;p&gt;This is a valid reason to investigate even if they are dead. How did they get radicalized, etc.&lt;p&gt;Not that it is a good enough reason to enforce breaking of encryption in the way proposed, but in a murder inquiry,  privacy of the perps has to give way.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>&amp;gt; No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. They&amp;#x27;re not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s quite the quote, especially given his history of employment.&lt;p&gt;The weirdest thing about this whole cell-phone saga to me is that the perps are dead, did not appear to be part of some organized group and that very little could be done to them that hasn&amp;#x27;t been done already based on evidence found on the phone.&lt;p&gt;Then there is the bit that a lot of the information that is on the phone is &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; already in the log files of the carriers. It&amp;#x27;s as if that phone somehow magically is going to yield an entirely new class of information that may not even exist in the first place.&lt;p&gt;To me it has been evident from day one that this is not about this phone or the data that&amp;#x27;s on it but just about the legal precedent, getting it in black-and-white from the former head of counter terrorism is quite an indictment of his successors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nickik</author><text>From other intel they know that he did not use his work phone much and saw no need to destroy it. He did destroy his private phone, so I think its quite clear that their is nothing on that phone.&lt;p&gt;I think its reasonable for the FBI to want to access it, but lets not have any illusions, the change that their is any evidence on the phone is basically 0%.</text></comment>