---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <3A7E31CF-AD2D-449F-8C5C-C3BFC3A2706C@roscom.com> Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2016 22:30:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: We're More Honest With Our Phones Than With Our Doctors We're More Honest With Our Phones Than With Our Doctors How health-tracking apps reveal new truths about our bodies. ... in recent years, mobile technology has granted me and countless others the ability to collect an unprecedented amount of information about our habits and well-being. Our phones don't just keep us in touch with the world; they're also diaries, confessional booths, repositories for our deepest secrets. Which is why researchers are leaping at the chance to work with the oceans of data we are generating, hoping that within them might be the answers to questions medicine has overlooked or ignored. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/were-more-honest-with-our-phones-than-with-our-doctors.html ------------------------------ Message-ID: <nd6btj$qh8$1@dont-email.me> Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2016 12:07:26 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein <fg_es@removeQRM.ionary.com> Subject: Re: FBI iPhone hack may be bad news for privacy On 3/25/2016 2:11 PM, Bill Horne wrote: ... > Apple isn't fighting "a court order to break it's own encryption": it > is fighting an order to make a custom version of IOS that will make it > easier for the FBI to find a password by brute force. > > But, now there's a company I've never heard of saying it can do it > without Apple's help, and that makes me suspicious that the NSA is > looking for an easy way to avoid disclosing any of the tricks "No Such > Agency" has up its sleeve. It is obvious that the Nameless Secret Agency (which is not so secret any more) can open the iPhone. They have good labs and forensic experts. The obvious approach, which may require NSA-grade labs, is to disassemble the phone and extract the contents of memory. Then they can throw all the brute-force attacks they want against virtual clones. Had the FBI quietly asked Apple to unlock the phone or simply extract its contents, Apple might have cooperated; I don't know if they have such good disassembly capabilities, but they know what pins of their own chips are needed to extract their contents. And the iPhone 5's encryption isn't nearly as strong as later models'. But the FBI overplayed its hand. They used San Bernardino the way the Patriot Act's authors used 9/11, as an excuse to request something that otherwise would not be acceptable. They asked Apple for a master key that would unlock "that" iPhone, keeping the iPhone in the FBI's possession, knowing full well that it would unlock every iPhone, or at least every similar one. And Apple, like everyone with basic technical literacy, knew the consequences of setting loose a master key. The FBI's acceptance of a third party offer (allegedly from Cellebrite) does sound like a face-saving gesture. They know they lost. ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 28 Mar 2016