[pointernil]

So there is an effort estimate to ADD what the authorities need?

Does this indicate the crypto is already broken?

What's hindering the "intelligence community" from doing it on their own on case by case basis?

Did they already do this?

Does Apple win disproportionately marketing wise by staging it self as the sound and secure provider?

[pfg]

The FBI is asking for firmware that disables its anti-brute-force delays and auto-wipe feature. The estimate Apple gave is for creating that firmware and signing it with their key. They're not breaking the crypto, but merely making an brute-force attack more viable (by reducing the delay to ~80ms, which is how long the hash algorithm takes per passcode).

The intelligence community would need access to Apple's firmware signing key in order to do this themselves. (IIRC, in their latest court filing, the FBI actually mentioned this would work for them if Apple is unwilling to implement the firmware changes.)

[pointernil]

Thanks for clarifying this.

[will_hughes]

There's widespread speculation that this is a test case.

I.e one big high visibility case where there is general support that the government should have access to a Terrorist's data.

Once Apple has been forced to write this one version of the software, the legal precedent is there to force Apple (and every other company building software and devices) to do it again for all the other devices that any law enforcement agency has on hand, for scenarios that might not have as much support.

[nickik]

I listen to the hole house commity about this issue. The FBI says it has "talked to anyone who would talk to them". The security expert is on record stating that she beliefes the NSA had the capability to break the 5C but did not want to share it with the FBI. She recommended the FBI build such capabity itself instead of threaten the security of everybody.