Linked List: February 18, 2016

Thursday, 18 February 2016

New York Times Removes Passage on China From Story on Apple/FBI Encryption Fight ★

Edward Snowden noted the following passage from this NYT report, but it was subsequently removed from the article:

China is watching the dispute closely. Analysts say the Chinese government does take cues from United States when it comes to encryption regulations, and that it would most likely demand that multinational companies provide accommodations similar to those in United States.

Last year, Beijing backed off several proposals that would have mandated that foreign firms providing encryption keys for devices sold in China after heavy pressure from foreign trade groups. …

“… a push from American law enforcement agencies to unlock iPhones would embolden Beijing to demand the same.”

I have no idea why The Times removed this, because it’s one of the most important but so far least talked about issues in this case. U.S. culture is in many ways insular, making it easy to see this as a “U.S.” issue. But it’s not — it’s a worldwide issue.

I’ve long wondered why China allows companies like Apple to sell devices without back doors for their government. A big part of why they tolerate it seems to be the fact that no government gets this.

Update: Daniel Roberts has posted a screenshot of the entire segment on China that was cut from the article.

Update, 20 February 2016: The NYT has published a new report revisiting the Chinese angle.

Businessweek Profiles Johny Srouji ★

Brad Stone, Adam Satariano, and Gwen Ackerman, profiling Johny Srouji for the Businessweek cover story:

At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He’s compact, he’s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. “Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,” he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. “The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,” he answers another question. He’ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. “When designers say, ‘This is hard,’ ” he says, “my rule of thumb is if it’s not gated by physics, that means it’s hard but doable.”

Update: This bit toward the end of the article has stuck in my craw all day:

It also lags behind Samsung in some areas of chip development, such as adding a modem to the central processor to conserve space and power and transitioning from a 20-nanometer chip design to a more compact 16-nanometer format, which means even more transistors can be crammed into a smaller space. “If I was just arguing hardware and not Apple’s marketing, I would say Samsung has the best processor,” says Mike Demler, a senior mobile chips analyst at the Linley Group, a technology consulting firm in Silicon Valley.

This quote just reeks of false balance — the notion that at the end of an article whose central thesis is that Apple has the industry’s best mobile chip design team, Businessweek needed a quote from someone saying it’s all just marketing hype and that Samsung actually designs better CPUs. That’s nonsense. Nobody who knows what they’re talking about disputes the fact that Apple’s in-house-designed A-series chips lead the industry.

What are the odds that the Linley Group has Samsung as one of its consulting clients?

Bruce Schneier: ‘Why You Should Side With Apple, Not the FBI, in the San Bernardino iPhone Case’ ★

Bruce Schneier, writing for The Washington Post:

Either everyone gets security, or no one does.

No, Apple Has Not Unlocked 70 iPhones for Law Enforcement ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

When it comes to the court order from the FBI to Apple, compelling it to help it crack a passcode, there is one important distinction that I’ve been seeing conflated.

Specifically, I keep seeing reports that Apple has unlocked “70 iPhones” for the government. And those reports argue that Apple is now refusing to do for the FBI what it has done many times before. This meme is completely inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst.

Jack Dorsey and Twitter ‘Stand With Tim Cook and Apple’ ★

Jack Dorsey:

We stand with @tim_cook and Apple (and thank him for his leadership)! http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Short, sweet, and unambiguous. Kudos to Dorsey and Twitter.

Why Apple? ★

Kieran Healy:

As a sidelight to this debate, I want to ask why is it that Apple, of all companies, is the one taking such a strong stand on this issue? It’s clear that Apple wants to resist the court order because of the precedent it would set — essentially requiring firms to break the security on their own products when investigators demand it. But that doesn’t answer my question. Why is Apple, specifically, fighting so hard on this?

I very much agree with Healy on this — Apple is in a unique position on this front.

Om Malik on Instagram Ads ★

Om Malik:

There is no denying that I am obsessed with Instagram. I check the app as often as I drink water, which is a lot. As a wannabe photographer, it is a source of inspiration: I love looking at perfectly curated lives of people, things and places. I ignore the harsh reality that perfection is almost always nothing more than perception. In fact, Instagram is the only social app that has survived the purge of social media on my iPhone; Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are all gone. (I use Facebook and Twitter mostly from my iPad Pro, which is my computer of choice these days and a replacement for my laptop.)

Over the past few days, though, I have been contemplating if it is time to get Instagram off my home screen as well. Why? Because it has been infesting my feed with too many ads — and not just any ads but terrible ads. Video ads. Ads that make absolutely no sense to me. Ads that have less relevance to my feed and me than dumb follow-me-everywhere banners on the web.

I check Instagram almost every day, and for reasons that I don’t understand, I have never seen an ad. Not one. But yet more and more I see other people complaining about the ads on Instagram.

Update: My best guess, and a few readers have made the same guess, is that I don’t see ads on Instagram because I don’t have a Facebook account.

NYT: ‘Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response’ ★

Nick Wingfield and Mike Isaac, writing for the NYT:

The range of reactions highlights the complicated set of factors influencing tech companies’ responses to government demands for customer data in the era after revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, of widespread government surveillance. Some companies may be keeping their heads low to avoid becoming targets during the raucous presidential campaign, while others may fear that being too vocal will jeopardize government sales and relationships with law enforcement, privacy experts said.

“The issue is of monumental importance, not only to the government and Apple but to the other technology giants as well,” said Tom Rubin, a former attorney for Microsoft and the United States Department of Justice, who is now a law lecturer at Harvard University. “Those companies are undoubtedly following the case intently, praying that it creates a good precedent and breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not them in the spotlight.”

Henry Blodget’s reaction:

Smart. Shows awareness of other side — impact of unbreakable encryption on law enforcement and Nat security.

This is not smart. We either all get strong encryption built into our devices — including criminals and enemies — or none of us do. And the smart criminals and enemies will just use third-party encryption software for their communication. This whole debate hinges upon a sheer fantasy, that somehow there can exist secure encryption that the “good guys” can break when they want to.

Reform Government Surveillance Statement Regarding Encryption and Security ★

“Reform Government Surveillance” is a coalition group including AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo. Their statement:

Reform Government Surveillance companies believe it is extremely important to deter terrorists and criminals and to help law enforcement by processing legal orders for information in order to keep us all safe. But technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure. RGS companies remain committed to providing law enforcement with the help it needs while protecting the security of their customers and their customers’ information.

Milquetoast.

A link to it was tweeted by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, and his tweet was retweeted by Satya Nadella, which is the closest Microsoft has come to commenting on Apple’s fight against the FBI.

Apple Apologizes and Updates iOS to Restore iPhones Disabled by Error 53 ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing at TechCrunch:

The update is not for users who update their iPhones over the air (OTA) via iCloud. If you update your phone that way, you should never have encountered Error 53 in the first place. If, however, you update via iTunes or your phone is bricked, you should be able to plug it into iTunes to get the update today, restoring your phone’s functionality.

Apple, in a statement to TechCrunch:

“Some customers’ devices are showing ‘Connect to iTunes’ after attempting an iOS update or a restore from iTunes on a Mac or PC. This reports as an Error 53 in iTunes and appears when a device fails a security test. This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the device leaves the factory.

Today, Apple released a software update that allows customers who have encountered this error message to successfully restore their device using iTunes on a Mac or PC.

We apologize for any inconvenience, this was designed to be a factory test and was not intended to affect customers. Customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement of their device based on this issue should contact AppleCare about a reimbursement.”

Weird that it only affected those who update their phones via iTunes. Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I can’t recall any previous issues that differed between OTA updates and iTunes updates.