Apple and the FBI
25 February 2016I’m quoted in this article on the controversy over the FBI’s requests to Apple for assistance in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists: Unlocking Terrorist’s iPhone Won’t Risk Your Security, Discovery News, 24 February 2016.
“Backdoors are complicated and impossible technical challenges and would risk everyone’s privacy,” Evans said. “But what the FBI is asking for is different from what Apple says the FBI is asking for.”
For the most part, I think the article gets things right. It is very misleading to conflate what the FBI has asked for here with a cryptographic backdoor that would indeed dangerously risk everyone’s privacy and security. I covered some of the technical aspects of this in my introductory computing course last week.