[Cryptography] Apple 3rd Party dilemma

John Denker jsd at av8n.com
Sat Feb 20 15:47:38 EST 2016


On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 5:19 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:

>> Apple got themselves into this mess, because Apple wants to control the customer's phone.

On 02/20/2016 12:01 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> +1

Let me add another +1 to that.

Here is the analogy that I would "like" to hold in some ideal
world.

1) Igor fills a scrapbook with photos and postcards. (first party)

2) The county government provided the scrapbook to Igor for
  him to use. (second party)

3) Joe owns a shop that specializes in selling custom trophies,
 T-shirts, postcards, and scrapbooks. (third party)  He sold
 the scrapbook in question to the county.

4) Ferris supplies Igor with his favorite thing to put into
 the scrapbook, namely pictures of goats.  (fourth party)

5) The FBI comes to Joe and says you are the third party.  You
 remember the scrapbook that you sold to the second party.
 We want you to seize it from the first party so we can 
 identify the fourth party, who is unknown to us but might
 be involved in kid porn.

 Joe replies:  You are out of your mind.  It's just a book.
 I'm in the printing business, not the search-and-seizure
 business.  I have never met this third party you speak of,
 and even if I had, I would have no control over what he 
 puts in his scrapbook.  It's not my book and it's not my
 information.

--------

I'm not saying this model is relevant to the current situation,
but it seems like something we could strive towards, for next
time.  And there /will/ be a next time.

On 02/20/2016 12:48 PM, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:

> The vast botnets of Legacy Windows installations are compelling
> evidence that expecting the average user to secure a general-purpose
> computing platform is unreasonable.  You pay a premium price for
> Apple to take care of the details.

An excellent point.  So most people are in a situation where
they lose their basic rights because they want to live in the
modern world, and they can't do that without interacting with
third parties.

    "Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things
     unless he bore the mark of the beast"



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