Apple-FBI

Apple VP Eddy Cue says the U.S. government could force Apple to secretly implement surveillance technology in its devices if the FBI's current demands in the ongoing iPhone encryption dispute are met. The company's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services made the ominous prediction during an interview yesterday with U.S.-based Spanish-language TV network Univision, a transcript ...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has backed Apple in its fight with the FBI over the agency's request that it unlock the iPhone at the center of the San Bernardino shooter investigation. Wozniak appeared yesterday on late-night TBS talk show Conan to share his thoughts on the high-profile case, asserting that the FBI had "picked the lamest case they ever could: the two phones owned by the people ...

The U.S. Justice Department yesterday appealed a New York federal judge's refusal to force Apple to help investigators unlock the iPhone of a suspected Brooklyn drug dealer. Last week, magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled that the FBI lacked the legal authority to force Apple to bypass the iPhone's passcode, and that the prosecution's use of the 1789 All Writs Act was an unconstitutional...

Tim Cook attended American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum this past weekend in Georgia alongside Google CEO Larry Page, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and other tech leaders, according to a new report from The Huffington Post. Top Republican officials, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton also attended, with the main...

The New York Police Department's counter-terrorism chief John Miller has accused Apple of providing aid to criminals by using encryption to secure its iPhones, according to The Daily News. Speaking on AM radio host John Catsimatidis’s The Cats Roundtable show on Sunday, the deputy commissioner hit out at Apple for its encryption policies, arguing that recent changes to the iPhone operating...

Apple VP Craig Federighi has published an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he criticizes the idea of a government backdoor into the company's software and accuses the FBI of wanting to "turn back the clock to a less-secure time". In the op-ed, published yesterday, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering writes that Apple must "work tirelessly" to stay one step ahead of...

Amazon has removed the ability to encrypt data on its consumer devices in the latest update to its Fire OS operating system. The change effectively kills local encryption on the company's range of Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers and streaming media devices, leaving the data on these devices vulnerable to attacks and potentially accessible to thieves if the devices are stolen. Kindle Fire,...

The iPhone at the center of the ongoing encryption dispute between Apple and the FBI may contain a "dormant cyber pathogen", according to the San Bernardino county District Attorney. The curious claim appears in an amicus brief filed by Michael Ramos with a California court on Thursday. In the document, Ramos speculates that the iPhone used by terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook "may contain...

Sixteen technology companies today teamed up to officially support Apple in its ongoing encryption dispute with the FBI, a copy of which has been shared by Apple. Twitter, Airbnb, eBay, LinkedIn, Square, Atlassian, Automattic, Cloudflare, GitHub, Kickstarter, Mapbox, Meetup, Reddit, Squarespace, Twilio, and Wickr filed an amicus brief [PDF] backing Apple's assertion that the FBI's use of the All...

Apple's head lawyer Bruce Sewell and FBI Director James Comey today testified at a U.S. congressional hearing on encryption issues, where both sides reiterated many of the same arguments that have been circulating since Apple was ordered to help the FBI unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Several interesting tidbits came up throughout the testimony, which lasted for ...

Alongside its battle with the U.S. government over an order to break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, Apple has also been embroiled in a dispute over a similar case in New York. In late 2015, the Department of Justice asked a NY federal magistrate judge to order Apple to help authorities gain access to an iPhone seized as evidence in a drug trafficking case. At the...

Apple has officially filed a motion (via Re/code) to vacate the court order that would require the company to help the FBI hack into the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. "This is not a case about one isolated iPhone," reads the filing, going on to say the FBI is seeking a "dangerous power" that would undermine the security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of people. ...

Apple's legal chief Bruce Sewell and FBI Director James Comey will both testify at a U.S. congressional hearing on encryption issues planned for March 1, the House Judiciary Committee announced today. Comey will participate in the first panel, while Sewell will testify in the second panel alongside Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Susan Landau and New York District Attorney Cyrus...

Apple recently hired Frederic Jacobs, one of the developers of the secure messaging app "Signal," which is notably known as the encrypted messaging service that Edward Snowden uses "every day." Jacobs will be working on the CoreOS team as an intern this coming summer, where he'll help the company beef up the safety measures and encryption of iOS devices across the board (via Business Insider). ...

Apple CEO Tim Cook today spoke with ABC News anchor David Muir, explaining Apple's decision to object to the court order that would require it to help the FBI break into the iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, California. In the interview, Cook reiterated much of what he wrote in the open letter where he announced Apple's plans to stand...

Amid a monumental dispute with the United States government over an order to hack into the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, The New York Times says Apple has already begun work on implementing stronger security measures "even it can't hack" to protect iOS devices. The FBI has asked Apple to help it brute force the passcode on Farook's iPhone by creating a version of iOS that...

ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir recently sat down with Apple CEO Tim Cook for an interview airing tonight that covers Apple's ongoing dispute with the FBI. In the interview, Cook will outline the reasons why Apple is objecting to the court order that would require it to help the FBI break into the iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December attack in San...

Privacy campaigners held organized rallies across the US yesterday to protest the FBI's demands that Apple unlock the iPhone at the center of its San Bernardino shooter investigation. Following on from limited protests in California last week, rallies extended from Albuquerque to Washington DC to support Apple's insistence that complying with the bureau's demands risked compromising the...

The U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing additional court orders that would force Apple to help federal investigators extract data from twelve other encrypted iPhones that may contain crime-related evidence, according to The Wall Street Journal. The revelation comes nearly one week after a U.S. federal judge ordered Apple to assist the FBI with unlocking an iPhone belonging to suspected San...

Shortly after Apple was ordered to help the FBI recover data from the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, Apple quickly said they would oppose the order, garnering the support of other major tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft. In a new interview with the Financial Times, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has instead backed the FBI, denying that they are asking for a back door. ...