I was not trying to suggest that, I was trying to convey that once a spy agency has remote access (sanctioned or otherwise) we can see by this example how it is proliferated and abused.
yeah, but the Australian Government is busy passing laws to require companies like Apple to do something pretty much exactly like this.
(And in my mind at least, those laws are without doubt part of a coordinated five eyes security/law-enforcement campaign to push those kinds of laws through everywhere: "Look, it works in Australia!" the Canadians/UK/NZ/US will say...)
Yeah. Right now, nobody (credible) is accusing Apple of enabling this kind of exploit.
If Apple are still selling hardware in Australia in 12 months time, the suspicion will _have_ to be that they have enabled something similar enough to this to be considered untrustworthy... (And not just Apple, any manufacturer or software company doing business in Australia...)
You were by simply stating it. It's the same type of saying-but-not-saying lines that the media uses like "if this allegation proves to be true" or similar such phrases. The fact that you state it suggests to the reader that people think it. If it was an honest mistake in wording on your part that's one thing, but you should probably avoid using such phrasing.
Look at all the people responding to the post you responded to saying that Apple did it. There's no reason to give a forum for such ideas.
No, they were not. They said "whether or not..". That does not imply Apple did anything.
In this case, it doesn't matter whether or not Apple even had a hand in it. The issue is that security exploits are security exploits, regardless if intentionally designed or not.
Your implication that doubting Apple is incredulousy, is ludicrous! Why is Apple so damn special?
At this point, there isn't any evidence that Apple is involved, and yes, they go on a PR blitz to focus on privacy and security, and get hit pieces published on how "privacy is a feature on the iPhone". But the history of backdoors suggests that no one voluntarily reveals them (Intel, Cisco, Juniper,...). In many cases, how the backdoors made their way in is a closely guarded secret, specifically to enable plausible deniability.
It's best not to put a company on a pedestal, like some religious cult.
To clarify my earlier comment, I wasn't taking a position one way or the other.
lawnchair_larry made a claim about "nobody credible" believing something. As a lay person in the field, I don't know who these credible people are. Therefore I asked whether lawnchair_larry could tell us who one or more of these credible people are, and where we can read more about what they believe to be true about the situation.
Asking lawnchair_larry to give you a complete list of everyone he considers credible is disingenuous.
As the other commenter stated, if someone thought that someone credible made that claim they could simply provide that source, which both (1) involves asymptotically less effort for everyone involved and (2) under reasonable assumptions is at least as effective.
“Sir, I’m going to need for you to list for me all the crimes you didn’t commit last Saturday.”
> How is he supposed to refer you to people not saying something?
That's not what I was asking for. I was asking him to refer me to credible people saying that they don't believe Apple was involved. Here is what he said:
> Nobody credible believes for a second that Apple was involved, for whatever it’s worth.
I thought perhaps he had read about credible people making this claim, or had some other way of knowing what these people believe. I was simply asking for more information, so as to further educate myself.
I believe that in the absence of any sources, this claim may suffer from the Argument to the People [1] and Argument from Authority [2] logical fallacies.
Full disclosure: I have a MacBook and an iPhone. I enjoy Apple products and respect their business model. And in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to believe that Apple wasn't involved. I just want to learn more about the subject from people who know more than me.
Could be some rogue employee, could be a legitimate employee under constraints / influence of an organization, etc. The NSA tried to do it with Linux quite a few times.
