[ghayes]

> with the exception that providing an easy means to brute force a phone to the authorities sets a horrible precedent

This is the entire concern (in my opinion and in my reading of Tim Cook's opinion). If the government can force Apple to backdoor this one iPhone (because terrorist), then they can force Apple to backdoor any iPhone for any person given a valid warrant, subpoena or otherwise granted power. Once the flood gates open...

[nostrademons]

It's worse than that. There's no guarantee that "the government" is "your government".

Imagine this scenario:

1.) Apple creates the custom iOS build for the FBI to use to decrypt this iPhone.

2.) China hacks into either Apple or the FBI and downloads this build. (We know they have the capability, because it's already happened. [1])

3.) A visiting U.S. diplomat, politician, or military officer has his iPhone pickpocketed while in China. (This also happens all the time.)

4.) The Chinese government uses this stolen software to brute-force the encryption on the device, finding access codes for classified U.S. military networks. (Because we know U.S. diplomats never use their personal email for state business [2], right?)

5.) Now a foreign power has access to all sorts of state military secrets.

The problem with backdoors is they let anyone in. Right now, there's a modicum of security for Apple devices because knowledge of how you would bypass the device encryption is locked up in the heads of several engineers there. The FBI is asking Apple to commit it to source code. Source code can be stolen, very easily. Tim Cook's open letter is making the point that once this software exists, there is no guarantee that it will stay only in the hands of the FBI.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

[2] http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/

[progressive_dad]

> knowledge of how you would bypass the device encryption is locked up in the heads of several engineers there

WARNING — THIS Apple Engineer IS CLASSIFIED AS A MUNITION --rsa--------------------------------8<------------------------------------- #!/usr/local/bin/human -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-in-3-lines-HUMAN ($k,$n)=@ARGV;$m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d-^1[d2% Sa2/d0<X+dLa1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H' ,$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n||die"$0 [-d] k n\n")&~1)/2) -------------------------------------8<------------------------------------- TRY: echo squeamish ossifrage | rsa -e 3 7537d365 | rsa -d 4e243e33 7537d365 FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS TRANSFER OF THIS APPLE ENGINEER TO FOREIGNERS

[venomsnake]

That is the whole point of warrants. If apple made iphone with unlocked bootloader it would have been really impossible.