Apple undermines police investigation tools

@ 2018/06/14
Protecting its criminal and terrorist users

Fruity Cargo Cult Apple is doing its best to protect users who commit crimes, or at the very least have the power to decide who is investigated.

According to Reuters, Jobs’ Mob plans to change its iPhone settings to undercut the most popular means for law enforcement to break into the devices.

Apple claims the move will protect all customers, especially in countries where phones are readily obtained by police or by criminals with extensive resources, and to head off further spread of the attack technique.

But police often need to look at the smartphone of a criminal as part of murder and terrorist investigations. The fact that Apple has been such a **** about helping them solve a terrorist investigation by unlocking a dead terrorist’s phone has forced them to revert to tools which can hack phones.

Apple said it will change the default settings in the iPhone operating system to cut off communication through the USB port when the phone has not been unlocked in the past hour.

This is how machines made by forensic companies GrayShift, Cellebrite and others connect and get around the security provisions that limit how many password guesses can be made before the device freezes them out or erases data. Now they will be unable to run code on the devices after the hour is up.

Apple insists that criminals, spies and unscrupulous people often use the same techniques as police.

Against all evidence an Apple spokesperson said: “We have the greatest respect for law enforcement, and we don’t design our security improvements to frustrate their efforts to do their jobs.”

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