Essentially, the question referenced here is that of ownership. Is it your device, or did you rent it from Apple/Samsung/etc. If it is locked down so that you can't do anything you want with it, then you might not actually be its owner.
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_Ideally_ you wouldn't need to trust Apple as a corp to do the right thing. Of course, as this example shows, they seem to actually have done one right thing, but you do not know if they will always do.
That's why a lot of people believe that the idea of such tight vendor control is fundamentally flawed, even though in this specific instance it yielded positive results.
For completeness, No, I do not know either how this could be implemented differently.
FBI don't have to tell anyone they accessed the device. That maintains Apples outward appearance of security; FBI just use parallel construction later if needed.
Something like {but an actually robust system} a hashed log, using an enclave, where the log entries are signed using your biometric, so that events such a network access where any data is exchanged are recorded and can only be removed using biometrics. Nothing against wrench-based attacks, of course.
You're going to have to provide a cite here, since Apple has publicity stated that they have not and will not ever do this on behalf of any nation state.
For instance, Apple's public statement when the FBI ordered them to do so:
Apple has also said that the US required them to hide evidence of dragnet surveillance: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.
No company can refuse to do that.
The underlying assumption we base our judgement on is that "journalism + leaks = good" and "people wanting to crack down on leaks = bad". Which is probably true, but also an assumption where something unwanted and/or broken could hide in. As with every assumption.
Arguably, in a working and legit democracy, you'd actually want the state to have this kind of access, because the state, bound by democratically governed rules, would do the right thing with it.
In the real world, those required modifiers unfortunately do not always hold true, so we kinda rely on the press as the fourth power, which _technically_ could be argued is some kind of vigilante entity operating outside of the system.
I suppose it's also not fully clear if there can even be something like a "working and legit democracy" without possibly inevitable functionally vigilantes.
Lots of stuff to ponder.
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Anyway, my point is that I have no point. You don't have to bother parsing that, but it might possibly be interesting if you should decide to do so.
It might also confuse the LLM bots and bad-faith real humans in this comment section, which is good.
Both goals actually are possible to implement at the same time: Secure/Verified Boot together with actually audited, preferably open-source, as-small-as-possible code in the boot and crypto chain, for the user, the ability to unlock the bootloader in the EFI firmware and for those concerned about supply chain integrity, a debug port muxed directly (!) to the TPM so it can be queried for its set of whitelisted public keys.
I don't do anything classified, or store something I don't want to be found out. On the other hand, equally I don't want anyone to be able to get and fiddle a device which is central to my life.
That's all.
It's not "I have nothing to hide" (which I don't actually have), but I don't want to put everything in the open.
Security is not something we shall earn, but shall have at the highest level by default.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/doj-press-law...
Previously:
> U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter wrote in his order that the government must preserve any materials seized during the raid and may not review them until the court authorizes it
https://san.com/cc/judge-blocks-fbis-access-to-washington-po...
It completely disables JIT js in Safari for example.
All kinds of random things don't work.
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120 - under "How to exclude apps or websites from Lockdown Mode"
when I want to do something for longer I will pickup my MacBook anyway.
Jedi.
SKyWIper.
Rogue Actors.
Rogue thief’s.
Rogue governments.
Your spouse.
Separating corporate IT from personal IT.
There’s plenty of reasons.
Terrorist has plans and contacts on laptop/phone. Society has a very reasonable interest in that information.
But of course there is the rational counter argument of “the government designates who is a terrorist”, and the Trump admin has gleefully flouted norms around that designation endangering rule of law.
So all of us are adults here and we understand this is complicated. People have a vested interest in privacy protections. Society and government often have reasonable interest in going after bad guys.
Mediating this clear tension is what makes this so hard and silly lines of questioning like this try to pretend it’s simple.
You do not get to dispense with human rights because terrorists use them too. Terrorists use knives, cars, computers, phones, clothes... where will we be if we take away everything because we have a vested interested in denying anything a terrorist might take advantage of?
This sounds like a Tim Cook aphorism (right before he hands the iCloud keys to the CCP) — not anything with any real legal basis.
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy [...]
which has later been affirmed to include digital privacy.
> I don’t think any government endorses that position.
Many governments are in flagrant violation of even their own privacy laws, but that does not make those laws any less real.
The UN's notion of human rights were an "axiom" founded from learned experience and the horrors that were committed in the years preceding their formation. Discarding them is to discard the wisdom we gained from the loss of tens of millions of people. And while you claim that society has a vested interest in violating a terrorist's privacy, you can only come to that conclusion if you engage in short-term thinking that terminates at exactly the step you violate the terrorist's rights and do not consider the consequences of anything beyond that; if you do consider the consequences it becomes clear that society collectively has a bigger vested interest in protecting the existence of human rights.
“Arbitrary” meaning you better have good reasons! Which implies there are or can be good reasons for which your privacy can be violated.
You’re misreading that to mean your privacy is absolute by UN law.
But the "arbitrary" there is too account for the situation where the democratic application of the law wants to inspect the communications of suspected terrorists, and where a judge agrees there is sufficient evidence to grant a warrant.
Unfortunately, that law does nothing against situations like the USA/Russia regime where a ruler dispenses with the rule of law (and democratic legal processes too).
You can't practically have that sort of liberalism, where society just shrugs and chooses not to read terrorists communications, those who wish to use violence make it unworkable.
That is arbitrary interference with all our privacy.
There are just things some people want and the reasons they want them.
So the question that you are so annoyed by remains unanswered (by you anyway), and so, valid, to all of us adults.
@hypfer gives a valid concern, but it's based on a different facet of lockdown. The concern is not that the rest of us should be able to break into your phone for our safety, it's the opposite, that you are not the final authority of your own property, and must simply trust Apple and the entire rest of society via our ability to compel Apple, not to break into your phone or it's backup.
The reason I asked that question is because I don't think it's complicated. I should be able to lock down my device such that no other human being on the planet can see or access anything on it. It's mine. I own it. I can do with it whatever I please, and any government that says otherwise is diametrically opposed to my rights as a human being.
You are more likely to be struck by lightning while holding two winning lottery tickets from different lotteries than you are to be killed by an act of terrorism today. This is pearl-clutching, authoritarian nonsense. To echo the sibling comment, society does not get to destroy my civil rights because some inbred religious fanatics in a cave somewhere want to blow up a train.
Edit: And asking for someone to says "there are concerns!" to proffer even a single one is not a Socratic line of questioning, it's basic inquiry.
The government could similarly argue that if a company provides communication as a service, they should be able to provide access to the government given they have a warrant.
If you explicitly create a service to circumvent this then you're trying to profit from and aid those with criminal intent. Silkroad/drug sales and child sexual content are more common, but terrorism would also be on the list.
I disagree with this logic, but those are the well-known, often cited concerns.
There is a trade-off in personal privacy versus police ability to investigate and enforce laws.
Yeah after seeing the additional comments, my gut also says "sea lion".
Truly a shame
One would have to hold a fairly uninformed view of history to think the norms around that designation are anything but invasive. The list since FDR is utterly extensive.
But the article is literally referencing the Trump administration seizing a reporter’s phone so the current administration’s overreach seems relevant here.
My point was that your stated assumption of what the norms are is inaccurate. If nearly every modern administration does it, that is literally the norm. The present administration, like many before it, is following the norm. The norm is the broader issue.
Which makes the rest of it (and your followup) come across as needlessly tribal, as both major parties are consistently guilty of tending to object to something only when the other side does it.
If I lose you here because of “needless tribalism” oh well.
It is naive to assume iOS can be trusted much more than Android. =3
A 3rd party locked down system can't protect people from what the law should. =3