Apple Refused Court Order To Decrypt iMessages For DOJ; DOJ Debates What To Do

from the warning-shot dept

For many months now, there's been a war of words over the whole "going dark" issue, with the two loudest participants being the DOJ demanding backdoors to encryption, and Apple standing up and speaking out loudly about the importance of encryption. Sooner or later you knew the two would meet in a legal situation -- and now it's happened, with Apple clearly winning round one. The NY Times is reporting that the DOJ obtained a court order earlier this summer, demanding that Apple hand over decrypted iMessage messages (in real time) for an investigation. Apple, apparently, told the DOJ that those messages are encrypted, and it has no way to comply with the order. This is exactly the scenario that everyone's been chattering about for the past year. And apparently, people inside the DOJ are debating what to do about it:

The case, coming after several others in which similar requests were rebuffed, prompted some senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials to advocate taking Apple to court, several current and former law enforcement officials said.

However, the article notes that any plans to take Apple to court have "been shelved for now." The rest of the article focuses on a somewhat related situation that we've discussed in the past, involving Microsoft refusing to comply with a DOJ subpoena to hand over emails that are stored on an Irish server. The issue in that case is not about encryption, so much as jurisdiction and the differences between a warrant and a subpoena. That case heads back to court this week. However, the issue about encryption and demands to decrypt communications or stored data will continue for quite some time.

The article notes that Apple did turn over some information, which the DOJ took as a sign of good faith:

In the drug and gun investigation this summer, Apple eventually turned over some stored iCloud messages. While they were not the real-time texts the government most wanted, officials said they saw it as a sign of cooperation.

Of course, the major difference here is that the iMessages are encrypted end-to-end, while data stored in iCloud is not, meaning that Apple actually has access to that content. Many have pointed out that in most cases, the important information that the DOJ will want is probably backed up in iCloud anyway, so perhaps that keeps the DOJ from actually going after Apple for the time being. But, still, it is noteworthy that a clash has already happened. Sooner or later, assuming Apple doesn't give in to the backdoor demands, the DOJ is likely to take someone to court over this... Perhaps it's just waiting for a company with pockets not quite as deep as Apple's.

Filed Under: doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, imessages
Companies: apple, microsoft

Was DEA's Fake Claims Of Not Being Able To Intercept iMessages Part Of Evidence Laundering Efforts?

from the questions,-questions dept

We recently covered the story of how the DEA's "Special Operations Division" (SOD) was getting information from various intelligence agencies -- including the NSA, FBI and CIA -- and was using that to alert DEA, IRS and other government officials of investigations they might want to do, without revealing too many details. Those agencies were then told to "launder" (i.e., manufacture evidence) the information to pretend that they'd discovered any criminal activity through other means. As an example, it was discussed how the SOD might tell DEA agents to look for "a certain kind of truck" at a specific truck stop. The DEA would then get local police to come up with some random traffic law reason to stop the truck, and have that turn into a search. And, then, of course during discovery the defense is never told how the government knew to stop the truck, because they'll claim it was just a "random traffic stop." That's almost certainly unconstitutional.

However, I was recently reminded of a story from just a few months before all of these revelations started coming out -- in which a DEA memo was "leaked," in which the DEA complains that Apple's iMessage encryption had "stymied" DEA agents from being able to spy on conversations. Except, as many people noted, this was clearly not true, because the iMessage encryption is not truly end-to-end. Apple holds the key itself, so the DEA can easily get the decrypted messages via Apple. Most of the assumptions were that this bogus memo was leaked either to try to get even more legal justification for requiring back doors in all communications technology, or to try to lull drug runners into believing iMessage was safe when it's clearly not.

Of course, now I'm wondering if there's even more to it: given that it's now been confirmed that DEA staff have been told to fake things to cover up where investigations originated, perhaps the letter was part of a laundering effort to hide the fact that some key breaks came from decrypted iMessage conversations that the government had been snooping through...

Filed Under: dea, encryption, imessages, laundering, nsa, sod

DEA Accused Of Leaking Misleading Info Falsely Implying That It Can't Read Apple iMessages

from the that's-not-the-truth dept

So this is interesting. Yesterday, CNET had a story revealing a "leaked" Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) memo suggesting that messages sent via Apple's own iMessage system were untappable and were "frustrating" law enforcement. Here's a snippet from that article:

Encryption used in Apple's iMessage chat service has stymied attempts by federal drug enforcement agents to eavesdrop on suspects' conversations, an internal government document reveals.

An internal Drug Enforcement Administration document seen by CNET discusses a February 2013 criminal investigation and warns that because of the use of encryption, "it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices" even with a court order approved by a federal judge.

CNET posted an image of the letter: In reading over this, however, a number of people quickly called bullshit. While Apple boasts of "end-to-end encryption" it's pretty clear that Apple itself holds the key -- because if you boot up a brand new iOS device, you automatically get access to your old messages. That means that (a) Apple is storing those messages in the cloud and (b) it can decrypt them if it needs to. As Julian Sanchez discusses in trying to get to the bottom of this, the memo really only suggests that law enforcement can't get those messages by going to the mobile operators. It says nothing about the ability to get those same messages by going to Apple directly. And, in fact, in many ways iMessages may be even more prone to surveillance, since SMS messages are only stored on mobile operators' servers for a brief time, whereas iMessages appear to be stored by Apple indefinitely.

That leads Sanchez to wonder if there might be some sort of ulterior motive behind the "leaking" of this document, done in a way to falsely imply that iMessages are actually impervious to government snooping. He comes up with two plausible theories: (1) that this is part of the feds' longstanding effort to convince lawmakers to make it mandatory that all communications systems have backdoors for wiretapping and (2) that it's an attempt to convince criminals that iMessages are safe, so they start using them falsely believing their messages are protected.

Which brings us to the question of why, exactly, this sensitive law enforcement document leaked to a news outlet in the first place. It would be very strange, after all, for a cop to deliberately pass along information that could help drug dealers shield their communications from police. One reason might be to create support for the Justice Department’s longstanding campaign for legislation to require Internet providers to create backdoors ensuring police can read encrypted communications—even though in this case, the backdoor would appear to already exist.

The CNET article itself discusses this so-called “Going Dark” initiative. But another possible motive is to spread the very false impression that the article creates: That iMessages are somehow more difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement to intercept. Criminals might then switch to using the iMessage service, which is no more immune to interception in reality, and actually provides police with far more useful data than traditional text messages can. If that’s what happened here, you have to admire the leaker’s ingenuity—but I’m inclined to think people are entitled to accurate information about the real level of security their communication enjoy.

While both scenarios are plausible, both seem fairly cynical as well. I'd like to think that law enforcement is above attempting such tricks, but unfortunately that might just be naive these days.

Filed Under: dea, encryption, imessages, privacy
Companies: apple