Intelligence community e-mail reveals "a new Pearl Harbor" type of thinking

[dixiegrrrrl]

Just as the PNAC report is now infamous for suggesting 9-11 was a desired "new Pearl Harbor" attack,
an email from the intelligence community has suggested the Apple/FBI Iphone case might prove to be advantageous to increased surveillance.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said it was troubling “that in the middle of an ongoing congressional debate on this subject, the FBI would ask a federal magistrate to give them the special access to secure products that this committee, this Congress, and the administration have so far refused to provide.” He spoke at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, of which he is the ranking Democratic member.

“Why has the government taken this step and forced this issue?” he asked.
“I suspect that part of the answer lies in an email obtained by the Washington Post and reported to the public last September,” Conyers said.

“In it, a senior lawyer in the intelligence community writes that ‘although the legislative environment towards encryption is very hostile today … it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.’”
The congressman was referring to a leaked letter authored by the intelligence community’s top lawyer, Robert S. Litt. In the letter, Litt advised “keeping our options open for such a situation.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/01/congressman-suggests-fbi-is-taking-advantage-of-san-bernardino-tragedy-to-push-agenda/

edited to add link to the original letter story:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tech-trade-agencies-push-to-disavow-law-requiring-decryption-of-phones/2015/09/16/1fca5f72-5adf-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

[revbones]

1. Don't worry. If Hillary gets in, she'll hand it to them.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. She's gotta love Trump at this point....

Moderate Republicans are threatening to vote for her.

[revbones]

3. Well she might get the NRA vote now

Since they are hosting a fundraiser for her.

It's funny how her supporters don't care.

[stillwaiting]

4. This has become WAY too much for me. I don't know if I belong with this Party any longer.

The next month or two will decide things for me.

[GeorgeGist]

5. Is Apple conceding ...

that it could crack an iPhone?

Is the backdoor already there?

[Egnever]

6. Yes they conceded they could do it

It isnt really cracking the phone and that is not what the government is asking for.

The government is asking them to disable the lockout feature of the phone. Currently if you enter an incorrect password on an iphone there is a longer and longer delay between subsequent failed entries and a total wipe of the phone after too many incorrect entries.

What the government is asking for and apple has admitted is possible is for apple to modify the firmware on the phone to eliminate the delay between incorrect entries and the wipe after too many failed attempts.

That would allow the government to go through all the possible password combinations over time until they unlocked the phone.

What is not possible is for apple to break the encryption. It can not be done. Encryption could be weakened with a universal key but that could only happen with new phones and could not be done to already existing phones. The government is not asking for that. At least not in this case.

[bemildred]

7. Yes, firmware can be replaced completely if necessary.

Whether you could do that without taking it out of the phone would depend.

And with proper firmware, you could see anything on the phone, but you still could not decrypt it.

[backscatter712]

8. The way it works with the iPhone:

The firmware has a cryptographic signature on it, which can only be generated using a private key in Apple's possession.

When you update the firmware, the phone checks the signature on it, to verify it's a correct Apple cryptographic signature, and it will not run the update if the signature is invalid.

What the feds are trying to force Apple to do is to make a cracked firmware, complete with a valid Apple cryptographic signature on it, so they can push a firmware update to the phone, that will let them unlock the phone.

And such a cracked firmware image is something that can easily be abused. Today it would be used on that EEEEEEVIL TERRORIST. Tomorrow, it will be used on pot-smokers. And then the firmware image will likely find its way to the governments of fine locales like China and Saudi Arabia, so they can use them to snoop on their citizens and violate their human rights.

[bemildred]

9. Exactly. Firmware is a black hole in which you can hide things.

And they put firmware in all sorts of stuff now. It's equivalent to no security at all, as far as I'm concerned, if the government can plop in anything it likes without mentioning it to me.

I like Apple's method, that's about the best you can do I would think, and still keep it modifiable and yet secure.

[bemildred]

10. And you can see why Apple does not want to have anything to do with it too ...

They will be held responsible for what the government puts there.

[Egnever]

11. Don't think that is correct.

It can not be easily abused.

Such a firmware would not seem to be generally useful for attacking other iPhones, though. The FBI's request is that the special firmware be tied to the specific device. Every iPhone contains a multitude of unique identifiers that are baked into its hardware (the serial number, the cellular radio IMEI, and the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth MAC), and the court order explicitly states that the custom firmware must be tied to the San Bernardino phone's unique identifier, such that it can only run on that specific phone.

Assuming that this can be done (and done robustly), it means that even if the custom firmware were given to nation-states or even published on the Internet, it would not serve as a general-purpose way of performing brute-force PIN attacks. It would be useless on any device other than the San Bernardino device. To make such leakage less likely, the court order does allow for the possibility that the custom firmware might be used only at an Apple location, with the FBI having remote access to the passcode recovery system.

snip

Hypothetically, if the special firmware were to leak, what exactly would prevent people from making it work with a different unique identifier—or even with any unique identifier. This concern strikes at the very heart of the matter, and it's why Apple is involved at all.

The iPhone requires that its firmware have a digital signature that authentically demonstrates that the firmware was developed by Apple and has not been subsequently modified. The FBI does not have (and is not asking for) access to Apple's signing key. It is instead asking for Apple to use its signing key to sign the custom firmware so that the iPhone will accept it and run it. It is this signature requirement that means the FBI cannot create the software itself.

It's this same requirement that also means that iPhone users would be safe even if the special firmware leaked. Changing the embedded unique identifier within the special firmware would break the signature and thus cause targeted iPhones to reject the firmware. This is why complying with the court demand would not jeopardize the security of any other phones. The cryptographic safeguards don't allow it.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stake-the-fbi-knows-apple-already-has-the-desired-key/

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Apparently it depends on which phone.

The San Bernardino case is a newer Iphone, Apple says it does not have the code to crack it, and is protesting the FBI's demand that it create code.
In other cases, Apple apparently can access the phones for updates, thus does have ability to get into phone.

[Octafish]

13. PNAC never leaves.

Take Ukraine. Please. It's a Buy Partisan PNAC crypto-fascist corporate dreamland for fracking and piratizing four ways from Super Sunday or Super Duper Tuesday:

Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...

Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.

SNIP...

Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons

The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.

Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."

Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.

CONTINUED...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again

That's from Rightweb. They're full of facts, for those who take the time to read and learn. One name to pay attention to is Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, who is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan.

Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC and the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.