Reply to post: Re: misinformed arrogance

Apple tells iPhone court 'the Founders would be appalled' by Feds

Charles 9

Re: misinformed arrogance

Not if it meant it ALSO opened the way to open every other safe made by that manufacturer...including ones potentially held by the government itself.

The thing with a safe is that even physical cracking takes time, which is why they're rated that way (in terms of how long it would take a professional safecracker, with no limits on his tools of the trade, to get it open). That's basically like brute forcing the phone's memory, which by modern standards has a safecracker rating of "practically infinite". Thing is, what if the safe company is forced to develop something that exploits a design flaw in their line of safes to cut the safecracker rate all the way down to "5 minutes"? That's more like what the feds are asking, and I don't think any safe company would want to play ball with that, given the negative reputation it would bring (much like how car manufacturers are a little leery about their brands being in racing games, particularly those noted for reasonably accurate physics; it might bring out a crash characteristic that might affect sales in the showroom).

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon