This certainly isn't how it looks to me. The FBI comes off looking like complete fools to me. They said that they needed Apple's help to get into this phone, that there was no other way, and that Apple's refusal to help endangered national security, humanity, and the universe. Then they got called in front of Congress and schooled by a Congressman, one of the last places you'd expect to find anyone remotely technically competent, about NAND mirroring. A few weeks later, they call the whole thing off, saying they didn't need Apple's help after all.
They come off looking like complete fools at best, since their huge public spectacle was based on "only Apple can do this," and now that it turns out they could have done it themselves, it just looks like they're incompetent.
Meanwhile Apple comes off as fully committed to their customers' privacy even when it means standing up to the US government. The fact that the FBI was able to get into this phone doesn't really change much; the mere fact that Apple could have gotten into it already means that security was lacking on it, but it seems to me that everybody understood that this was an older model and newer ones are better. Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure both the FBI's proposed attack from Apple and whatever the FBI did themselves would work on the latest hardware too, but just about everyone is convinced that the Secure Enclave would prevent it. And then in September Apple will announce the iPhone 7 with Even Better Security, further demonstrating their commitment in this area.
> Meanwhile Apple comes off as fully committed to their customers' privacy even when it means standing up to the US government.
My conspiracy theory instincts tell me that this is a play to fool us into thinking that Apple is fighting for our privacy, in order to make us trust Apple unconditionally and in the meantime not develop new ways of hiding our communications. In reality I think the government always gets what it wants.
>They come off looking like complete fools at best, since their huge public spectacle was based on "only Apple can do this," and now that it turns out they could have done it themselves, it just looks like they're incompetent.
No one ever doubted that there was some vulnerability that exists that could be used without Apple's help. There is almost always a vulnerability. The hard part is discovering it. As soon as a third-party told them about it, they paused the case against Apple. The new information changed the facts of the case and made compelling Apple unnecessary. For the FBI to do anything else would have been perjury of the highest order.
That's what makes them look incompetent. They insisted that they couldn't do it without Apple's help. Turns out they could, and they just didn't do their homework first. (Or, if you believe they had ulterior motives, then they didn't want to.)
Those are two radically different values of "know everything" you're pretending are in conflict, there.
Yes, I expect the FBI to "know everything" when it comes to techniques available to do their job. No, I don't expect the FBI to "know everything" when it comes to the contents of my private messages. There's no conflict.
They come off looking like complete fools at best, since their huge public spectacle was based on "only Apple can do this," and now that it turns out they could have done it themselves, it just looks like they're incompetent.
Meanwhile Apple comes off as fully committed to their customers' privacy even when it means standing up to the US government. The fact that the FBI was able to get into this phone doesn't really change much; the mere fact that Apple could have gotten into it already means that security was lacking on it, but it seems to me that everybody understood that this was an older model and newer ones are better. Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure both the FBI's proposed attack from Apple and whatever the FBI did themselves would work on the latest hardware too, but just about everyone is convinced that the Secure Enclave would prevent it. And then in September Apple will announce the iPhone 7 with Even Better Security, further demonstrating their commitment in this area.