Apple Invented a New Kind of Shovel Where You Can Carry Around Your Buried Treasure

I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with all I’ve seen about Tim Cook, Apple CEO, defying a court order to code a workaround for the iPhone 5c left by our bro & sis native-immigant hybrid bombers in San Bernardino. Both ways.

It frustrates me when people do not extract, identify, understand, and then argue from essentials. Like, people will not pay for various levels of security, for whatever their reasons?

Shovels used to be a great device for ensuring your security. Dig a hole somewhere, drop stuff in it, and cover it up. Back then, various governments and lords were well aware that it would be pointless to hit up shovel manufacturers for the location of all buried treasure and incriminating evidence.

Torture notwithstanding, the only real issue on the table is whether you can buy a truly secure product…reminiscent of shovels, or not. There’s no middle ground. It’s secure, or it’s not secure. Do you understand simple logic, by which I mean, are you smarter than the 99%?

Here’s a tech piece that gets into all details you may want. Bottom line, and interesting, is that while Apple could comply with this order and maybe successfully get at the data, later iterations of the hardware render Apple a shovel manufacturer:

Apple can comply with the FBI court order.

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Richard Nikoley

I started writing Free The Animal in late 2003 as just a little thing to try. 20 years later, turns out I've written over 5,000 posts. I blog what I wish...from diet, health, lifestyle...to philosophy, politics, social antagonism, adventure travel, expat living, location and time independent—while you sleep— income by geoarbitrage, and food pics. I intended to travel the world "homeless," but the Covidiocy Panicdemic squashed that. I became an American expat living in Thailand. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances. ... I leave the toilet seat up. Read More

15 Comments

  1. Doug on February 18, 2016 at 12:31

    I like the analogy better of Apple as a safe maker. The Gov’t wants them to build safes with a master key that only “they” could use…..ha ha.

    Apple has quite a bit of marketing built into having a locked down ios….this is dangerous territory for them.

    • Richard Nikoley on February 18, 2016 at 12:52

      It reminds my of PGP back in the 90s, which I played around with for fun.

      But the encryption unbreakable even but brute force, so as I recall the GovCo went after…was it Zimmerman…over some sort of bastardized legal theory of giving a weapon to the enemy (just what I recall).

      We need lots of shovels.

      • Richard Nikoley on February 18, 2016 at 12:53

        BTW, I considered the safe make analogy. I don’t think it holds. Ultimately, a safe is unsafe.



      • Richard Nikoley on February 18, 2016 at 12:59

        And BTW more, you didn’t really think about this, did you? You already had your petty analogy in mind and sought to undercut my far superior one.

        The difference between buried treasure and a safe is that everyone knows where the “safe” is, and it’s just a matter of easy physics from there.

        Now, you’ve been schooled. Never forget that lesson.



  2. Doug on February 18, 2016 at 13:47

    I didn’t mean any disrespect, but the Gov’t has the device right now….they just need the “key.” Right now physics isn’t helping them.

    Unless the Gov’t wants access to device data without having to physically have the phone in possession….but that is black helicopter type stuff.

  3. Wilbur on February 18, 2016 at 16:50

    I probably don’t understand simple logic, but what I don’t understand is this: If a “secure” device can be accessed in any way, isn’t it insecure? If not by the FBI, then by a more devious organization? Call me old school, but I don’t put private information in a public place if I can help it. I expect private information in public space to be revealed. My only hope is to be notified of its revelation so I can do something about it. A phone is public space.

    I prefer the shovel. Hiding stuff in my own private space. One day, I’ll die and my private space will be public, but until then it’s mine.

    Oh, and the phone was owned by San Bernardino? I’d expect less privacy using someone else’s phone.

  4. pzo on February 20, 2016 at 13:51

    Normally, I’d be on the “pro-privacy” side of the fence. I’m not in this case because this is the phone of actual murderers and terrorists who were not acting alone. Information on the phone might prevent another incident. It would be a great irony that there is another incident with another, unsecured/less secured phone and that one points back to the SB shooters.

    This is not random phone hacking and monitoring (like the Raptor) but a very specific unit involved in a mass murder.

  5. solver on February 20, 2016 at 14:13

    I see John McAfee has offered to hack the iPhone. It seems he wants to avoid the setting a legal precedent whereby the government can make such orders again.

    BTW, I would have thought John McAfee are separated by only a few minor chances in life. I see similar approaches to thought (evidence based) and political beliefs (libertarian/anarchist), you both like flying light aircraft and you both got run out of town by the locals when you moved south of the USA state line! If you two had come together at some stage it could have been a great meeting of the minds. Chance and life hey? Fuck it.

  6. Josephinehydehartley on March 20, 2016 at 12:47

    The phone belongs to who it belongs to. Why doesn’t the government ask whoever owns the phone for permission to interfere with it?

    • pzo on March 20, 2016 at 13:59

      Uh………..she’s dead.

      Please try to stay informed, ya know?

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