An overview of the important facts in the Apple vs. FBI case, including the main technical & legal concerns
On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, of about 80 employees, in a rented banquet room. Farook was an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Pakistani-born lawful permanent resident of the United States.
After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented sport utility vehicle (SUV). Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout. On December 3, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a counter-terrorism investigation. On December 6, in a prime-time address delivered from the Oval Office, President Barack Obama defined the shooting as an act of terrorism. -- 2015 San Bernardino attack, Wikipedia
The purpose of this repository is not to comment on the attack which took place on December 2nd but to investigate the resulting Apple vs. FBI case which publicly took place from February 16th - March 28th 2016, including any prior related cases as well as a post-case investigation. The focus will be on the technical details involving iOS security and the capabilities of the custom "FBiOS," as well as explore the legal ground for the case and the potential precedent for policies towards telecommunications providers using encryption. Court documents, official statements, and any important technical papers dealing with iOS security or functionality are also mirrored in this repository.
This is an experiment in open-source, decentralized citizen journalism using Git software, archive databases aka "wayback machines" (the Internet Archive, Archive.is) & the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The use of the archives is not only to save captures of websites as they were when they were found & prevent link-rot, but also because many of them lack HTTPS (which I hate), so I've made the effort to spare you that potential insecurity.
Update: I have not yet published a working IPFS hash for this story, though one was briefly available before as part of a test. The issue of needing to frequently update the overview will be much less of a hassle once I've figured out IPNS.
All information is pulled from, and compared against, multiple sources. Information which is unsourced should not be taken as fact but as conjecture or opinion from the writer(s), though evidence to support it may be found later & will be included as soon as possible. Beware particularly of "anonymous" or "unnamed" sources -- they will be included in the overview as indications of what that particular news outlet, company, or government agency wants the public to believe, but as they are unverifiable for lack of an accountable person (linked to a name, profession, or employer) should be taken with many grains of salt. The basic standard of credibility when citing anonymous sources is to 1) provide direct evidence which supports their statements 2) give a valid reason(s) for why they requested to remain anonymous, steps which very few mainstream journalists take.
Please notify the writer(s) if you notice mistakes, inaccuracies, or link rot (to combat this, sources are linked in their archived form). Statements from government officials or corporate executives in particular should always be evaluated critically, with the consideration that they are parties in a legal case which carries serious implications not only to themselves but to the public who (for the most part) is the intended audience, whether as citizen subjects or as customers.
I welcome & encourage you to contribute to this project by pull-requesting, copying, or forking this repository (CC BY 4.0)
If you would like to become a contributor to this project, please contact: @J9Roem.