Linked List: February 19, 2016

Friday, 19 February 2016

My thanks to MacPaw for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to announce that their developer platform DevMate is now available free of charge. DevMate is a single SDK that provides a slew of back-end services for Mac developers: in-app purchasing, software licensing, update delivery, crash reports, user feedback, and more. Plus real-time analytics, with sales and downloads, are available from DevMate’s dashboard.

Among the indie Mac developers using DevMate for their apps are MacPaw themselves (for CleanMyMac), Smile Software, and Realmac. It’s a robust, dependable solution for developers who want to sell their Mac apps outside the App Store.

More Mac App Store Certificate Problems ★

Lost amid the FBI/iPhone encryption hubbub was another bad week for the Mac App Store — apps just stopped launching, with the only solution being to delete the app(s) and re-install from the store. Michael Tsai (as usual) compiled a thorough roundup of information and commentary.

Donald Trump Calls for Boycott on Apple ★

It’s easy to laugh (especially since the Trump Twitter account continues to post from an iPhone), but it really is no joke when the leading Republican presidential candidate is calling for a boycott against a U.S. company. This is why other companies are being so tepid in their support for Apple.

Worth noting that in the afternoon conference call with reporters (where Apple revealed that the suspect’s Apple ID password had been reset, thwarting the chances to get the phone to do an iCloud backup), they responded to Trump:

Sr. Apple exec, says Trump’s call for Apple boycott puts the company in standing with other good people he has criticized - Reuters

Justice Department Calls Apple’s Refusal to Unlock iPhone a ‘Marketing Strategy’ ★

Eric Lichtblau, reporting for the NYT:

The Justice Department, impatient over its inability to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino killers, demanded Friday that a judge immediately order Apple to give it the technical tools to get inside the phone.

It said that Apple’s refusal to help unlock the phone for the F.B.I. “appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” rather than a legal rationale.

As though providing genuine security to users is not meaningful, valuable, and genuinely important.

From the government’s filing:

Apple has attempted to design and market its products to allow technology, rather than the law, to control access to data which has been found by this Court to be warranted for an important investigation.

As Ashkan Soltani noted:

DoJ’s updated motion essentially attempts to describe encryption as an illegal technology.

Apple: San Bernardino Suspect’s Apple ID Password Was Changed in Government Custody, Blocking Access ★

John Paczkowski, reporting for BuzzFeed:

The Apple ID password linked to the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists was changed less than 24 hours after the government took possession of the device, senior Apple executives said Friday. If that hadn’t happened, Apple said, a backup of the information the government was seeking may have been accessible. […]

The executives said the company had been in regular discussions with the government since early January, and that it proposed four different ways to recover the information the government is interested in without building a back door. One of those methods would have involved connecting the phone to a known wifi network.

Apple sent engineers to try that method, the executives said, but the experts were unable to do it. It was then that they discovered that the Apple ID password associated with the phone had been changed.

Was the Apple ID (iCloud) password changed by the FBI, or by the San Bernardino County government, to whom the phone belongs?

Update: The password was changed by the county, according to the DOJ’s filing (page 18, footnote 7). Thanks to James Grimmelmann for the source.

Do We Have a Right to Security? ★

Rich Mogull:

Don’t be distracted by the technical details. The model of phone, the method of encryption, the detailed description of the specific attack technique, and even the feasibility are all irrelevant.

Don’t be distracted by the legal wrangling. By the timing, the courts, or the laws in question. Nor by politicians, proposed legislation, Snowden, or speeches at think tanks or universities.

Don’t be distracted by who is involved. Apple, the FBI, dead terrorists, or common drug dealers.

Everything, all of it, boils down to a single question.

Do we have a right to security?