[and-can]

“The relief we seek is limited and its value increasingly obsolete because the technology continues to evolve. We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it.

“We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” Comey continued. “I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead. “

[vitd]

That's a lot of double-speak. They know that removing the timeout so they can try thousands of passwords per second opens up a huge security hole. What he's saying is "we want it both ways". We don't want to take away security for users, we just want to make it easier for someone who's not the owner of the phone to get into it.

[ikeboy]

The government owned the iPhone in question.

[ghostly_s]

If the government org in question had followed iOS deployment best-practices, they would have already had sanctioned access to this phone.

[smileysteve]

Which is a bigger flag for mismanagement. If the phone had had device management software as most major companies provision, no hack would have been necessary.

[lukifer]

But it didn't own the software, which is still patented and copyrighted by Apple, and merely licensed to end users.

[bobwaycott]

So an EULA just protected people?

[rubyfan]

"The government" is not one organization.

[ikeboy]

That doesn't seem relevant unless there's a dispute over ownership, which there isn't.

[rdtsc]

Well reset it, and start downloading pictures of cats, what's the problem?

[mentat]

In what sense of ownership?

[ikeboy]

Public funds purchased the phone. I'm not sure what you mean?

[rubyfan]

"public funds" is not a single shared bucket of loot that everyone puts into. In this case it was a county owned device.

County governments are typically recognized incorporated organizations that have no real line of authority or connection with the federal government.

So no, the FBI or federal doesn't have some ownership claim that makes it ok to break into. As others point out they have basically seized the device from its owner in the course of investigation.

[ikeboy]

Unless the county was forced to hand it over, this is not relevant.

[Taniwha]

The phone is evidence in a police investigation, they didn't buy it, while its owners are dead surely it belongs to their hiers? or does that whole rule of law thing mean nothing

[uptown]

The phone was a work phone issued by the San Bernardino Health Department, so no - the heirs of the killers didn't assume ownership of the phone. It was always the property of the San Bernardino Health Department.

[ikeboy]

http://ktla.com/2016/02/18/why-didnt-san-bernardino-county-o...

[Spivak]

So if someone the FBI is interested in knew they were being targeted and used a strong, complex, long password which would be impossible to 'guess' even without the restrictions then how does

> and without it taking a decade to guess correctly.

even make sense when there isn't a force in the universe that can guess that password in 10 millennia.

If they demand that restrictions like gated attempts and automatic wipes be removed, they're just pushing the industry to move to restrictions that can't be removed.

Hell, if I was feeling really cheeky and worked for Apple, I would give the FBI their backdoor which allowed them access, but they have to provide the phone a proof of work worth at least $10 trillion.

No this probably couldn't be made secure.

[developer2]

The only way to accomplish the goal in the first paragraph is to execute the steps they "don't want to" do from the second paragraph. It's more than double-speak, it's pure bullshit.