The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.
The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.
“Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the court record reads, referring to the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson’s devices.
Archive: http://archive.today/gfTg9
The FBI just wants the public to think their phone is secure. I got news for you, it’s not secure. Look up Snowden.
Reminder that none of your data is safe on a cloud. Law enforcement can get a judge to sign off and make Google/Apple decrypt your cloud data and give it to them.
If you really want your data private you have to put it on an encrypted hard drive. Recommend Veracrypt.
Recommend Veracrypt.
Or Luks which is well integrated with Linux. Are there significant advantages with Veracrypt?
It depends on which cloud. US cloud services are inherently unsafe. Some other countries have more respect for privacy.
and even then, unless you unlock it for law enforcements upon request. you will serve lifetime in imprisonment or until you agree to unlock it and whatever if any crime is within the locker to continue imprisonment. so safeguarding data really doesn’t matter in the end anyway because any sensitive data kept anywhere will be used against you either by the law or by criminals. which often times seems to be one and the same.
Clearly you are not a lawyer, not educated in law, nor do you know a single thing regarding what you are talking about, yet you felt compelled to leave a comment full of complete disinformation. Is letting people on the internet know how dumb you are a family tradition, or is this something new you are trying out for yourself?
it’s amazing you think not unlocking your shit will get you out of jail.
or maybe you just come from a country where law and logic is just optional or possibly paid for.
unless you unlock it for law enforcements upon request. you will serve lifetime in imprisonment or until you agree to unlock it
I’m like 99% sure that isn’t how that works. Held in contempt of court, maybe, but lifetime imprisonment, doubt it.
Can you provide any statute or reporting to indicate a person can be jailed indefinitely over not unlocking a device?
for the US, check the somewhat recent Joseph Gelfgatt case.
Snowden was pre-lockdown mode but yeah.
This news sparks joy. It’s a shame the FBI is wasting their time on petty political bullshit like this instead of going after real crime. What a shameful chapter for the FBI, and that’s really saying something given their illustrious history.
You act like there’s a cabal of kid rapist running the world.
The “funny” thing is that anybody thinking that a mere 5 years ago would have been deemed a conspiracy nutter.
That’s not by accident. Every right wing conspiracy is a ridiculous pastiche of the shit they are really getting up to, or intend to in the near future. No doubt Pizzagate was invented to make people incredulous about claims of secret cabals of kid rapists in elite circles. Every accusation a confession.
Every accusation [is] a confession
That is indeed something which has been very visibly and very often proven, again and again and again, in the last couple of years.
I reckon it was always so, but we just forgot it during the period after WWII and the ressurging of the far-right.
To me the difference is always, why do you believe this is true. A lot of the bullshit stuff is 1. It’s possible 2. They don’t like the person it’s about, and that’s it.
I bet they are making the frogs gay, too.
Well… yes? AFAIK that was Alex Jones talking about endocrine disruption caused by atrazine in herbicides. Frogs turning gay seems a silly thing to focus on, but the health and environmental effects of herbicides and pesticides are a valid concern. By turning it into a joke, intentionally or not, he was doing his bit to invalidate serious discussion of the issue.
Social contract is breaking.
No need to see any legitimacy in this government or its goons.
Right!?
Like ohhh. So important to see if someone liked a post. Meanwhile tech espionage and terrorists take over the world.
How dare we ‘radicalize’ over the idea of free Healthcare.
Absolute sham of ‘protection’.
If they had any decency at all they should be arresting the president.
But hell would need to freeze over first. 😡
They did that, twice. Even got a trial and 34 felonies. Repercussions? None. Honestly if you do your job and not only see nothing come of it but said felon has an impact on your job now I can sympathize a bit.
He would have been fucked if he had lost the election, and money won the election, money and the markets is the only thing Trump cares about.
Scott Galloway has the right idea
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This is just an advertisement. There is no phone the government cannot get into if they wanted.
Is this an advertisement? Sure, yes. The government can get into any phone? No.
Any iPhone? Almost certainly.
Virtually any phone I would say, yeah. Either by rubberhose cryptanalysis or by sheer time, money, and tools, they most likely can.
So “any phone” turned into “virtually any phone”, and the owner needs to be alive and apprehended, and then they “most likely” can, maybe.
See, I mostly agree with what you said. But you can see how we have moved the goalpost away from “there is no phone the government cannot get into”, to “the government can get into most phones”, which is quite a different statement.
I am not moving goalposts or making different statements, I’m not the user you were replying to.
I also mostly agree with you, but my angle is that the difference between “the government can get into virtually any phone” and “the government can get into most phones” is that the latter makes it seem like you can be “smart/knowledgeable enough” to avoid that, and that’s untrue. You should assume everything you keep on your phone can be extracted because of the nature of smartphone manufacturers, the supply chain etc, but I do not believe no phone can’t be broken into like OP was saying, thus “virtually any phone” seems fitting.
I get what you are saying but I’m seeing this from a different perspective.
The first statement is saying “there is nothing you can do”. You shouldn’t care about your privacy, you shouldn’t try to be careful, you shouldn’t fight for yourself. The government is all powerful and you should accept your fate. That’s why I don’t like these sweeping absolute statements. They promote giving up.
The other is “this is hard, but it’s possible to win”. And sure, you probably won’t win if the government is specifically targeting you and sending agents with rubber hoses against you. But in all likelihood they aren’t. And there are many things you can do to prevent actual passive surveillance affecting you.
Big claims require big proof. But I bet all you have is a hunch.
The big claim is that they couldn’t get into the reporter’s iPhone. You are right to demand proof before believing something so obviously made up.
Unless there’s an incredible amount of people “not in” on some universal secret, maths gonna maths, and physics gonna physics. Actual encryption works well in a proven way, computational power isn’t as infinite as some people think, and decent software implementations exists.
Getting hold of anything properly encrypted with no access to the key still requires an incredible amount of computing power to brute force. Weak/bad implementations can leave enough info back to speed this up, malicious software can make use of an extra, undocumented encryption key, etc. but a decent implementation would not be easy to break in.
Now, this does not say anything about what Apple actually do. They claim to have proper encryption, but with anything closed source, you only have your belief to back you up. But it’s not an extraordinary claim to say that this can be done competently. And Apple would have a good incentive in doing so: good PR, and no real downside for them since people happily unlock their phone to keep their software running and doing whatever it wants locally.
Or, they walk in through the back door.
Math have little room for backdoors.
Big claims require big proof. But I bet all you have is a hunch.
I work alongside law enforcement. Part of my job involves helping detectives follow the instructions Apple/Google provide to them for downloading and unencrypting people’s phone data once a judge has given permission for them to request it from Apple/Google.
Now, I’m not familiar with “Lockdown Mode”. Maybe that uses separate encryption to encrypt data stored on your phone that ISN’T cloud synced data. But even then, if that Lockdown Mode is software created by the manufacturer, then they could have the decryption algorithm to decrypt it and I wouldn’t trust it. I would only trust open-source encryption software, like Veracrypt.
Bottom line is I’m here to guarantee you that if the data is synced with a cloud, which most people’s phone data is, it absolutely can be obtained by law enforcement.
Not that it’s particularly relevant, but typically when law enforcement get into the data, it’s usually because they have reasonable suspicion and it’s usually kiddie porn or chat logs proving they were trying to meet up with underage individuals. And I’m here to tell you that shit is way more prevalent than I think most people realize.
You can read more about lock down mode here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/105120
Again, like you said, what is described in the article is a big claim, and it should require a big proof, not some trust-me-bro apple marketing.
Stop requiring accounts just to view content.
Fucking scumbags
I tried GrapheneOS on my Pixel, and it’s pretty cool, but unfortunately I want my phone to have full functionality. I’ll sacrifice some privacy and just practice digital minimalism, which ultimately is the best form of privacy.
What didnt work for you?
I just got tired of everything being a hack. I simply need my phone to work and I also see a bit of irony installing play services just to receive proper notifications. I know I know the whole app sandboxing bit. But still, it seems counterintuitive I don’t have to worry if my phone’s going to let me down if I’m driving a need to download some obscure parking app or if I need tap to pay to function which in the United States I do. One time I was at Costco, renewing my membership, they needed me to download the app real quick to do something on the account. But because the app wouldn’t function right, my wife had to do it.
I needed to buy some ribs the other day, but I forgot my wallet. If I had tapped to pay on my phone, that wouldn’t have been an issue.
they needed me to download the app
They wanted you to, but i get your point.
receive proper notifications. I know I know the whole app sandboxing bit
Still worth it for the sandbox
You don’t NEED tap to pay. I literally never use it, ever, unless I have a card with a bad chip (happened once).
Forgetting your wallet like a dummy doesn’t mean you NEED tap to pay, it means you need to remember to bring your wallet.
Also, there is nothing you NEED the Costco app for, an org like that can’t lock things behind an app to function because their customer base is too broad, they will inevitably have old people with T9 Nokia bricks still. It might have been the most convenient way to achieve it, but it’s not a requirement - even if that particular sales associate didn’t know how and would have to phone a friend.
All that to say I’m not trying to convince you to use gOS; I fully recognize that security is on one end of the spectrum from convenience, and we all choose where we want to be on that spectrum. But I felt the need to counter your claims… Nobody NEEDS tap to pay smh. If you care about privacy at all you wouldn’t be linking cards to apple or Google, adding yet another layer of giant data collection to some of your most intimate data.
One shortcoming of lockdown mode, as far as I can tell: you can pair your phone and watch so locking your phone will lock your watch as well, but you can’t do the reverse. It seems more likely that a hostile party would get access to your phone first while you still (temporarily) have control of your watch, so being able to lock your phone from your watch would be extremely useful. (Or for that matter, set lockdown mode to trigger automatically if your watch is removed or your watch and phone move to different locations.)
Locking your phone and Lockdown Mode are drastically different things.
Best advertisement I’ve heard for an iPhone ever. Now that Android moving to the same walled garden business model…
GrapheneOS is ~10x more private and secure than iOS.
I want a phone, not a hobby.
Discounting some minor comparability issues, the process just requires a computer, an internet connection, a cable, and the ability to read through a couple paragraphs of instruction.
I’m an experienced technologist (a software engineer for over 30 years), I used to regularly install CyanogenMod on my phones. While I didn’t find the graphene OS installation to be particularly difficult, I did find actually using it to be too much of a challenge to live with every day. The biggest single problem I can recall is that I could not do any group
SMSMMS texts. Many searches and attempts at fixes later, I realized that it was a known bug that for reasons unknown did not seem to affect all users. There were a number of minor annoyances in addition to that bug.That may reflect more on how Google has locked down things on the pixel phones, or other stuff they’ve done to keep things as proprietary as possible in their software and devices. I switched back because it wasn’t worth the hassle to me.
That’s odd, group texts works fine on my phone.
I’m talking about daily use. I have a good friend, we’ve both been computer nerds since The Apple II era, we both used to put custom roms on our android phones, we’re avid self hosters, etc… He recently switched to Graphene and wants to switch back to something that’s less of a pain. His complaints are pretty much the same as reasons I haven’t switched. I warned him it would be an adjustment.
As someone who uses GrapheneOS with sandboxed GooglePlay on his only smartphone (with daily usage for years at this point): I don’t know what kind of adjustment you are referring to. I never had to adjust to anything, because I never encountered anything that GrapheneOS couldn’t do that stock Android could. Follow the installation process and after that the phone behaves like a regular phone, except you have way more options regarding security and privacy.
Is your friend trying to use GrapheneOS without any Google services maybe?
I had to fiddle with some stuff to get the Google location history and Android Auto working. But if you’re using it for privacy-from-Google purposes you probably don’t care about those.
Edit: also RCS and tap to pay with credit/debit card. Those require your carrier and Google to allow them, respectively.
So you haven’t used it yourself and are shitting on an OS based on anecdotal evidence? "Stop making stupid assumptions”, I once heard someone say.
I use GrapheneOS and have helped other less tech-savvy people install and use it. You can just roll with the defaults and have a better privacy stance than the spyware Google puts out, or you can take a deep dive. It works just fine either way.
My own personal experience over the past year with it has… Largely not lined up with that? The install process was easy, I do have gplay enabled but rarely use it, favoring fdroid, and it’s… Been fine? It’s felt mostly like stock android tbh
That’s the same thing stopping me from switching my friends from Linux. I know one of them would if I pushed.
I’ve been daily driving Linux for almost 2 years and also always have a minor issue daily. “Oh. Bluetooth module decided it just didn’t want to work. Better reload. Oh. Reloading doesn’t work? Got to restart. Oh. Now my Wi-Fi has completely crapped the bed and restarts every 5 seconds”.
Then the major issues are catastrophic, even though rare. I once had a system just start… filling up empty storage at a rate of 1 GB a second with an empty log file. I couldn’t figure out why. Ended up reinstalling everything.
I don’t mind fixing these issues. And hell, I have fun, but I’m the only computer guy in our group though so I’d be playing tech support for these people if they ever changed.
What distro are you using? This seems bizarre and the sort of thing you see on a less stable rolling release.
I’ve hopped around. The 3 main ones I’ve touched though are:
- Ubuntu (which had the Storage Bug. Especially weird considering the only thing that thing had going on was Firefox for Streaming at the time)
- Bazzite (which ultimately i switched away from because Halo just wouldn’t launch one morning)
- CachyOS (specifically KDE), which has the issues with WiFi and Bluetooth. From what i understand The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issues are mostly because Linux doesn’t have great Realtek drivers.
All of which are the Stable Versions. I believe Bazzite and CachyOS are both Rolling Releases which would explain the issues. I don’t think Ubuntu is as far as i know which makes it’s storage issue especially interesting.
I also have an issue with Debian on my media server where despite telling it everywhere possible not to go to sleep, it decides it wants to go to sleep anyways. But i don’t really consider that under these same issues because that’s a media server and i expect it to be a little more “Tinkery” than my Main use PCs.
My friend tried using it last year and he started getting some super annoying RCS issues that caused him to switch back to iPhone. He was very invested in using graphene but it became too much.
I don’t mean to sound callous but if some relatively minor RCS issues, and there’s really no way they could be classified as major, stopped your friend from doing what he set out to do then he wasn’t all that invested in the idea.
I’m not saying there’s no problems with GrapheneOS or any other product helping consumers to change their habits but if you really care about issues like corporate overreach then a little inconvenience isn’t a deal breaker. In fact, it’s to be expected when switching away from mega corporations. They invest tons of money to make their user experience decent so that they can profit off of your data. If you want to get away from that you have to accept the fact that you’re moving away from a product supported by thousands of engineers with billions of dollars to spend towards a product developed by tens of engineers or less with very limited funding. Those developers do a damn good job IMO but a dip in ease-of-use has to be expected.
At the end of the day we all have to decide if we’re going to prioritize convenience or mindfulness. It sounds like your friend made his choice, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with the choice he made, I just think it’s important to put it in the proper perspective.
Well well well, look who likes using banking apps and tap-to-pay.
I have GrapheneOS and use banking apps and tap-to-pay on a daily basis.
I am not in the US, though.
All of my banking apps work in Graphene, but yes, some banks apps don’t work, which is why there’s published lists so you can check before flashing.
It’s not a hobby.
Don’t confuse Graphene with a tinker box, or some ROM you once rooted.
It’s a professionally polished and very secure fork of Android.
There are some minor limitations with a handful apps that can’t pass their Google specific internal security checks, but there’s lists of them that you can check to see if any are a deal breaker for you.
Safely using an insecure device swiftly becomes a hobby, unless you give in to the default experience.
I installed GrapheneOS, installed my apps, and I’m done. If I want to deny telemetry or to set up something like the duress password, it’s one to two taps.
iPhone users, man… stop drinking the fucking punch.
Nowaday is not just iPhone users. Every major company fucks the consumers over and people defend them like it’s their own company. I don’t get it.
It’s just as stupid to blanket defend Graphene. There’s lots of different users, with lots of different use cases. If there was a one size fits all solution for every user on the planet everyone would already be using it.
I’ve used GOS daily for years. Your characterization of the OS as a “hobby” could not be further from the truth. After some basic initial configuration, it simply works like any other phone. My bank app works. Every app they told me would not work, works fine. Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if all this FUD is a result of personal lack of willingness to do the research or something more nefarious like intentional misinformation.
Plugging a cable and clicking 5 buttons isn’t a hobby in my opinion, it’s an excuse. After these 5 clicks is just Android. Every app work great even the “normal” propriety apps including banking app without Google Play Services installed. If you’re not willing to do the least this is why people in America and other countries are hunted like animals right now. It’s easier just to whine and do nothing.
Did a lot of looking into it, step 1 for me was always buy a different phone, or try seeing if a different ROM would work, and make the documentation for others…none of which came out to be 5 clicks, and not knowing if my phone will receive calls is a deal breaker if you actually work.
I didn’t get what you mean. If you’re happy with your current device keep using it if you think you’re safe in context of your threat midel. Less e-waste the better. For whatever reason you don’t want to change you current device and you’re not happy with the stock software you have the freedom to explore custum ROMs for your specific phone. That’s what I did. Sure this can be time consuming and not that easy. What do you mean “seeing if a different ROM would work”? For example with LineageOS (for MicroG also fixes device integrity), iodeOS, even something like Ubuntu Touch they tell you what isn’t working. What do you mean you have to “make the comumentation for others”? But on GrapheneOS and iodeOS is literally 4 clicks after turning on OEM Unlock and USB Debugging on the phone. On the top of that if you’re buying a new phone and don’t want so much choice GrapheneOS is only for Pixels. I don’t know where you live but to hear that you don’t know if you’ll resive phone calls is wild. If this isn’t a sign to change I don’t know what to say. Also you can always go back to stock and on Pixels is something like 4 clicks.
Sigh, how, just how do you quantify that?
sigh you don’t.
So your comment is just fanboy bullshit?
LOL sure
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And the FBI can’t get in? I doubt that. It has always been notoriously easy for law enforcement to get in to Android phones.
Obligatory XKCD.
Everyone have different thread model…
It’s usually either posix or windows… is
pthreadposix? They confuse me when i’m outta coffee.
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I’d be seeking hardware to run an OS like GrapheneOS.
So the hardware made by the other company who’s CEO has very close ties to the current US administration.
Graphene looks promising but restricting it to Pixels kinda kills it for me.deleted by creator
Android phones have lockdown mode too. Hold the power button to show the shutdown menu and click lockdown.
joke on you! google’s recent requirement is that all phone vendors make the power button open an AI menu instead of the shutdown menu! on most phones it can be fixed, but it’s often hidden very deep in the settings.
I’d forgotten because the first thing I did when that rolled out was revert it so long-press on the power button was the power menu. IIRC the new default is like long-press-power-and-volume-down or some garbage like that to show the power menu.
They’re not the same. Android lockdown is a temporary lock screen state. iOS lockdown is a full OS hardening, affects the way the phone operates full-time.
Ah, my bad. I looked it up and while Android does have an analog to what iOS calls “lockdown”, Android uses different terminology for it, since “Lockdown” is, as you said, lock the lockscreen to be password/pin-only (which would still be a reasonable approach before being forced to turn over your phone to somebody since those are things that are harder to be compelled to provide).
Android’s version of iOS “Lockdown” is called “Advanced Protection Mode”.
Dunno what this has to do with the Ginza Apple Store. The intern just used the first stock photo they could find, I guess.
It’s sad how the internet has somehow made the quality of ostensibly professional journalism so much worse. It was supposed to make things better.
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