Your iPhone may be nearly impermeable, but its online backup isn’t.
Source: Mossberg: The Cloud Loophole
Apple has drawn a line in the sand over keeping its customers’ iPhones encrypted and secure. It’s fighting the FBI in a California court over the Bureau’s demand that it create a special, weaker version of iOS that would make it easier for government computers to crack the passcode on a phone and thus reveal its contents. This week, the company won a big victory when a federal judge in New York strongly upheld its objections in a similar case. But the battle is far from over and is likely to be settled in either the Supreme Court or Congress.
The special software sought by the FBI — which Apple, with its marketing flair, is calling “GovtOS” — is, in essence, a back door to the encrypted phone, because the passcode is the user’s encryption key, and Apple has deliberately designed the iPhone so the company itself lacks any other key to decrypt it.
Even before the court order in California ignited the current fight, I opposed the idea of any encryption back door on grounds that it could also help criminals and repressive foreign governments. And I stand with Apple in its dispute with the FBI over the demand for special passcode-cracking software, for the same reasons.