Monday 28 March 2016

FBI drops the case against Apple

Withdrawal of the Dept of Justice lawsuit brings an 
unexpected conclusion to a divisive battle between 
FBI and Apple:
Summary:

Abandoning a Legal Battle: The U.S. government dropped its case against Apple, saying it doesn’t need the tech company’s help to access the data on the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter last year. Turns out the feds were able get in with the help of an unnamed third party. Apple has argued that cooperating with law enforcement would put smartphone users at increased risk of snooping from hackers and the government, while the FBI contended that accessing the device would be in the interest of national security.

Full Story:

The Justice Department is withdrawing its lawsuit against Apple, telling a federal court Monday that it was able to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters without the tech giant's help.
“The FBI has now successfully retrieved the data stored on the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple required by this Court Order,” Justice Department spokeswoman Melanie Newman said in a statement.
The FBI is currently reviewing the information on the phone, consistent with standard investigatory procedures.
The FBI had asked the courts to direct Apple to unlock the iPhone, but at the last minute, delayed the first court hearing last week. At the time, authorities said they wanted to test a new method to unlock the phone without Apple's assistance.
In a motion filed Monday, the DOJ told the court that method proved successful, giving authorities access to the data on the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of two shooters who killed 14 people in the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack in December.
The withdrawal of the DOJ lawsuit brings an unexpected and rapid conclusion to a divisive battle that many thought would go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Apple’s defiance of an FBI court order last month touched off a heated debate over government access to encrypted data that has enveloped Capitol Hill and spread to the campaign trail.
The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels have only brought added urgency to the debate.
Law enforcement officials have long pushed for greater access to encrypted data, warning that criminals and terrorists are using the technology to help hide from authorities, or “go dark.”
But the tech community and privacy advocates have cautioned that guaranteeing access to secure data weakens global digital security, and potentially endangers online privacy.
The Apple-FBI standoff quickly became a proxy for this long-standing battle.
The FBI wanted Apple to create software to disable a failsafe security feature that would wipe the phone’s memory if an incorrect password were attempted incorrectly 10 times.
In its refusal, Apple said that software was akin to a dangerous “backdoor” that could give hackers access to all iPhones. The company also argued that compiling a company to generate code — or “speech” — violated the First Amendment.
Apple also warned that complying would set a troubling precedent that empowers law enforcement to ask other companies to undermine their own security.
The FBI insisted that such a method was the only way to access Farook's phone, and that its request was not meant to set a precedent.
“At the time we made the [initial] filing, it was a last resort,” a law enforcement official told reporters in a conference call late Monday.
The bureau suddenly changed course last week, when it said a third party outside the government had approached the agency with a previously undiscovered way to crack into the phone. It remains unclear what the method is, or who discovered it.
“I don’t think we’re going to go into any details other than what we put in our filing before,” the law enforcement official said.
The official also declined to give any indication of what might be on Farook's phone.
Despite backing down from its controversial court order in San Bernardino, the Justice Department did not rule out using the approach in future cases, emphasizing that San Bernardino was not a "test case."
According to reports, there are at least a dozen other criminal cases in the country where law enforcement is seeking help to unlock phones. 
Apple also recently asked a New York judge to press pause on a similar case revolving around the locked iPhone of a convicted drug trafficker. The government is appealing the judge's recent decision that Apple could not be forced to comply with the request to help unlock the phone.
“It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails,” Newman said.
The law enforcement official would only confirm that the method used to hack Farook’s phone worked on that one phone, an iPhone 5c running a version of Apple’s iOS 9 operating system.
“It’s premature to say anything about our ability to access other phones at this point,” the official said.
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News Edited By:
Kanwal Abidi
*Journalist & Political Analyst
063 News (Global Press Agency)

Friday 11 March 2016

FBI's Community Leadership Award

Juvenile Assessment Center Wins FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award

FBI DenverMarch 10, 2016
  • Public Affairs Specialist Deborah Sherman
The FBI Denver Division has recognized a local non-profit that helps victims of child sex trafficking and other troubled youth with its most prestigious national citizenship award, the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award (DCLA.)
The Juvenile Assessment Center, known as the JAC, received the award Thursday morning during a press conference at the FBI Denver Division. Executive Director Kira Suurvarik accepted the DCLA on behalf of the organization’s staff and board of directors.
“This is truly an honor for us, thank you,” said Suurvarik. “We are proud to partner with the FBI’s Rocky Mountain Innocence Lost Task Force to find and recover children from adults who are sexually exploiting them in Colorado and Wyoming.”
Leaders within the FBI Denver Division chose to honor the JAC for working with children and teens who use drugs, run away from home, struggle in school, and face mental illness. The JAC also partners with the FBI Innocence Lost Task Force to stop human trafficking. Together, they identified and recovered several girls and boys who were being sexually exploited last year during Operation Cross Country IX.
“Kira and the JAC have helped make the world safer for our children, have given parents a place to go when they’re at their wits’ end, and have helped create safe, healthy, and happy families,” said Denver FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Ravenelle. “Thank you for your community service and partnership with the FBI.”
Since 1990, the JAC has partnered with government and community-based agencies to provide coordinated responses for youth and families. Its partners include law enforcement, the Department of Human Services, school districts, mental health centers, non-profit providers, and juvenile justice agencies in Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert, and Lincoln Counties.
The FBI has been presenting the DCLA  for more than two decades to publicly recognize extraordinary citizens and organizations that help make our communities safer today and in the future.
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News Edited By: KANWAL ABIDI 
                                  Journalist & Political Analyst
                                  *063 News