Trust, Security, Apple

We cannot trust our government, so we must trust the technology | US news | The Guardian:

First of all, I don't believe that the NSA or other US government agency can't break the iPhone security. Interagency, they may have decided that they don't really care about these particular people so they are not going to break THIS ONE, but if the top security apparatus of the US can't break into an iPhone, the idiots at the top are even more incompetent than I thought. (and that is INCOMPETENT!)

I used to work with security stuff at IBM. We had a couple of guys that would "go missing" for a few weeks, "on business", but with nothing more official than that. The "over drinks / wink wink nod, nod, I really need to shoot you now was" ... NSA. It was VERY clear that they could break whatever was "secure", and were going to continue to do so.

Beyond that, consider this from John McAfee ...

With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75% are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact. 

And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year. But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.

If you don't know what "social engineers" are relative to computer security, they are "con men, grifters, pickpockets". If you want to get a little humility on how good such can be, take a look at this.   McAfee is VERY different ... he is running for president on the libertarian party this year ...

The top linked article is quite sad, but maybe the saddest part is this:

Perhaps most importantly, we need to end the culture of impunity that protects people who run illegal programs and continue to thrive in their careers after they are exposed, but vindictively pursues the whistleblowers who expose that illegality. 

Only such a system, that offers transparently meaningful oversight and real consequences for those who violate our trust, has any chance of being trustworthy enough to remove the persistent global demand for platforms that preserve user privacy and security even at the expense of weakening the capabilities of their policing and national security agencies.

Seriously? With BO in the White House and Hillary Clinton running for president? With the guys that exposed Planned Parenthood's  selling of body parts under indictment?  Why just a few years ago the MSM had a cow over tracking who was calling the cells of known terrorists! Now they want "more trust"?

What part of THERE IS NO TRUST are these people missing?  In order to have such a thing as trust, one would need shared values, say Christianity. A written Constitution that was actually followed would be good. Perhaps after a few decades of return to such, some level of "trust" in organizations and governments might recover.

Those are gone ... learn to be as untrusting and independent as you possibly can be, and then learn some more!

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