[hardwaresofton]

Along what dimension is this "not scalable"? If you have 100 iPhoneCs and the exploit works on all of them, it sounds like it's very scalable to me. It doesn't scale across every iphone ever made (or that will be made), but honestly, with a few tweaks (maybe a forced OS downgrade, whatever), it could be made to be.

Also, if you don't release the attack vector, things get even murkier.

Plus, the government happens to be the entity that prints our money, as well as an entity that is essentially limitless in funds because it extracts it's budget from US.

Competition from firms may keep the price of breaking the iphone down, well within what the government can pay without anyone noticing (once this dies down). Nevermind companies that would LOVE to sell the NSA a single iphone exploit for anywhere close to $1M.

[reynoldsbd]

I think he meant "scalable" in terms of the amount of money, time and effort it will take to overcome each subsequent security obstacle faced by law enforcement. In that sense, this whole Apple-FBI fiasco was certainly not scalable.

Also, money is a very real limiting factor. The government can't just print more money to solve its problems.

[vectored]

Could you explain that, please? I had understood that the 3 rounds of QE essentially achieved this?