For the past few years, the FBI and other authorities have revived the "War on Crypto" because they say it prevents them from accessing devices that they need to bring killers and terrorists to justice.
FBI director Christopher Wray has been fond of claiming that the Bureau was locked out of some 7,775 devices last year.
The FBI told the Post that "Programming errors" were responsible for the over-counting, since they were apparently pulling their numbers from three separate databases.
Sen. Ron Wyden issued a scathing letter to the FBI in response to their admission of error, chiding that because the FBI is "Struggling with basic arithmetic" it should "Not be in the business of dictating the design of advanced cryptographic algorithms." He pointedly noted that such a major miscalculation could either be the product of "Sloppy work" or something more nefarious: "Pushing a legislative agenda."
With the San Bernardino incident, it looks like FBI leadership was more motivated by a general antipathy to encryption than a specific need to access particular data.
The FBI was eventually able to access the phone through a technical tool purchased by a private vendor.
An inspector general's report from March finds that the FBI "May not have been interested in researching all possible solutions" and " and obtaining vendor assistance that ultimately proved fruitful.
As Sen. Wyden's letter points out, the report suggests that "The FBI was more interested in establishing a powerful legal precedent than gaining access to the terrorist's iPhone."
Perhaps this is why the FBI turned to numbers, instead. Without a newsworthy event to point to, FBI director Wray may have found the sky-high number of reported locked phones to be a convenient rhetorical fallback.
How many devices are associated with a single case? The lower figure that the FBI provided likely contains many such instances.
The FBI should not have inflated the number of devices that they say they cannot access.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/05/29/is-the-fbi-trying-to-bolster-its-war-on
FBI director Christopher Wray has been fond of claiming that the Bureau was locked out of some 7,775 devices last year.
The FBI told the Post that "Programming errors" were responsible for the over-counting, since they were apparently pulling their numbers from three separate databases.
Sen. Ron Wyden issued a scathing letter to the FBI in response to their admission of error, chiding that because the FBI is "Struggling with basic arithmetic" it should "Not be in the business of dictating the design of advanced cryptographic algorithms." He pointedly noted that such a major miscalculation could either be the product of "Sloppy work" or something more nefarious: "Pushing a legislative agenda."
With the San Bernardino incident, it looks like FBI leadership was more motivated by a general antipathy to encryption than a specific need to access particular data.
The FBI was eventually able to access the phone through a technical tool purchased by a private vendor.
An inspector general's report from March finds that the FBI "May not have been interested in researching all possible solutions" and " and obtaining vendor assistance that ultimately proved fruitful.
As Sen. Wyden's letter points out, the report suggests that "The FBI was more interested in establishing a powerful legal precedent than gaining access to the terrorist's iPhone."
Perhaps this is why the FBI turned to numbers, instead. Without a newsworthy event to point to, FBI director Wray may have found the sky-high number of reported locked phones to be a convenient rhetorical fallback.
How many devices are associated with a single case? The lower figure that the FBI provided likely contains many such instances.
The FBI should not have inflated the number of devices that they say they cannot access.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/05/29/is-the-fbi-trying-to-bolster-its-war-on
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