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Apple Vs. FBI Case

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My topic for the research paper will focus on the Apple vs FBI case with the San Bernardino terrorist shootings and the FBI requesting to gain access to the killers locked phone. I will review whether the FBI has the right to gain access to the phone and if Apple has the right to not help out the FBI with gaining access to the phone. I will also bring up alternatives that the FBI could use to get into the phone. My personally opinion is I don’t have an issue with the FBI trying to gain access to the terrorist shooters phone if it will help to prevent further attacks against the United States and allies. The reason FBI officials want access to the phone is there is encrypted data in the terrorist phone and its GPS system which may hold vital …show more content…

None are easy, all are expensive and time consuming, and at least two run the risk of physically destroying the phone and everything on it. One that is commonly used by companies that reverse-engineer computer chips in search of patent infringements. One method uses minute changes in power consumption and radio frequency as a phone is powered on and off. This aids in guessing the passcode. A second resets the phone's counter so that after each attempt to unlock it, the security feature's internal counter is turned back to 1, fooling the phone into believing multiple attempts to unlock it have not been made. The most invasive involves taking apart the chip where the cryptographic keys are stored so they can be read with an electronic scanning microscope. All are much easier said than done. The main limitations are their cost and time, and if you mess up, you destroy the chip. Law enforcement could find these alternatives necessary if courts eventually rule that Apple is not required to create a new operating system, or what it terms a back door, to get around a security feature in recent iPhones that automatically erases the data on the device if someone tries to hack its ID passcode. The FBI, in a case that's playing out in public as well as the legal system, argues that it has no other alternative to access the …show more content…

Once in view, the transistors would then be read with a scanning electron microscope. At this level, it’s sometimes possible to actually see which transistors are burned on or off, then use software to reconstruct the binary data those on and off's represent, to find the key. The circuitry itself could be changed using a focused ion beam to either convince the chip to go into test mode or get it to dump its memory, giving up any codes that might be on it. It's unknown if the FBI has tried any of these alternate techniques. The agency declined to elaborate publicly on what steps examiners have taken, short of demanding Apple's assistance. In court documents filed supporting the Justice Department's request, an FBI computer forensic examiner Christopher Pluhar, who is involved in the investigation, said only that he had "explored other means of obtaining this information with employees of Apple and with technical experts at the FBI, and we have been unable to identify any other methods feasible for gaining access to the currently inaccessible data stored within the…device.’’ Some experts have argued that the FBI would not want to actually take the chips apart to find code keys stored on them because it would also destroy the evidence. There is legal reason to reject a method of data recovery because it would result in the destruction of the chip, as long as it didn't

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