Just heard James Comey, the Director of the FBI, testifying in front of Congress regarding the contretemps between Apple and the FBI about opening up the IPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist ... hoping to find more about possible further plans or accomplices. The interesting aspect of this testimony was that the FBI was not just asking for the simple solution of providing it with the access code (which I previously suggested that they do) but the FBI wanted Apple to disable two functions in this particular IPhone:
- the function that erases everything in memory after ten tries at entering the access code, and
- the function that requires a few second pause between each attempt at entering this access code (thwarting super-computer attempts to try every possible combination)
Now, to me, this request is an around-the-barn way of getting into this particular IPhone vs. my previous recommendation and suggests that the FBI has its eye on bigger fish to fry in the future ... and is probably why Apple is pushing back.
However, Apple's Tim Cook's riposte that all security mechanisms would be futile in the future if Apple relented in this instance is also a little disingenuous. Why not just offer to provide the access code in this instance in the manner I had suggested? And then see what happens.
