Bryan Chaffin

The president made his comments at South by Southwest (SxSW), where he did a panel with Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith. You can watch that panel in its entirety below. Note that there are 32 minutes of wait at the beginning—skip ahead accordingly. Also note that the interview covers much more than just this one…

Alarms The FBI accuses Apple of trying to “alarm this Court with issues of network security, encryption, back doors, and privacy, invoking larger debates before Congress and in the news media.” “That is a diversion,” the filing asserts. “Apple desperately wants—desperately needs—this case not to be 'about one isolated iPhone.'” According to Wired, Apple General…

Civil War Surveillance by the Bad Guys In my opinion (and the opinion of people far smarter and more knowledgable than me), protecting ourselves from criminal and foreign threats requires strong encryption, unbreakable encryption. This has the unfortunate side effect of similarly protecting criminals, terrorists, and foreign entities from our good guys. That stinks, but…

“Removing device encryption due to lack of customer use is an incredibly poor excuse for weakening the security of those customers that did use the feature,” Jeremy Gillula, staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Reuters. He added, “Given that the information stored on a tablet can be just as sensitive as that stored…

Congressman David Jolly (R-FL) “Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil,” Mr. Jolly said in a statement. He added: This is an order to cooperate in preventing the deletion of evidence on a single phone of a terrorist murderer…

There were some individual shareholders who certainly think Apple is wrong, including one unnamed attendee who told The LA Times, “I do think they should unlock it. For something as serious as this, there should be a way to do it.” Security and encryption experts, however, have long understood that this is a situation where…

FBI Director James Comey The FBI asked a federal court to compel Apple to create a new version of iOS that could be sideloaded onto an iPhone used by Sayed Farook, one of two terrorists who murdered 14 people in an attack in San Bernardino, CA, in December of 2015. The court agreed, but Apple…

Gizmodo reported that CIA Director John Brenner and NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett blamed the media for terrorists turning to encryption in a hearing by the House Intelligence Committee. This is not only a dangerous idea for a free society, it shows that some of our top intelligence folks are drawing precisely the wrong lessons…

Reuters/Ipsos Poll First off, let's look at the Reuters/Ipsos survey results, which shows that 46 percent of people agreed with Apple's decision to fight the court order. 35 percent disagreed. The poll broke down results by political affiliation, just 37 percent of Republicans agreeing with Apple, while 45 percent disagreed. For those identifying as Democrats,…

Pew Survey Chart Pew surveyed 1,002 people, half on landlines and half on cellphones. 51 percent sided with the FBI, while 38 percent thought that Apple should not unlock the iPhone. In reality, Apple has not been ordered to unlock the iPhone, but instead was ordered to create a new operating system that could be…

To make matters worse, the malware is digitally signed with a valid Apple developer certificate. Intego says that certificate was issued to a “Maksim Noskov.” According to Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D., of the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, the security researcher who first spotted the malware, Apple has since revoked that certificate. Mr. Ullrich posted a…

GOOGL (Alphabet's ticker symbol) ended Tuesday's trading session at $780.91, a gain of $10.14 (+1.32 percent), on heavy volume of 6.3 million shares trading hands. Shares of AAPL ended the day at $94.48, down $1.95 (-2.02 percent), on light volume of 37.2 million shares trading hands. That left Alphabet's market cap at $537 billion, while…

The study was coauthored by several signatories under the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. It's stated purpose was to evaluate claims by law enforcement and governments, both the U.S. and in other countries, that end-to-end encryption in our communication devices is crippling surveillance efforts. The umbrella term used for this argument…

Promo shot of Assembly Member Cooper, in the middle Source: Mr. Cooper's website Put another way, Assembly Member Cooper wants to make all of us vulnerable to the hacking of criminal organizations, malicious hackers, and foreign governments, and he's trying to do it in the very state that is home to Apple and Google. From…

There is going to be a Congressional Cybersecurity Lab to teach Congress about cyber. https://t.co/eEzQe8IznP — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) January 19, 2016 The grant description: A grant to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will support the creation of a new Congressional Cybersecurity Lab that builds congressional capacity on cybersecurity in a nonpartisan manner.…

Assemblyman Matthew Titone with Kimberly Cantoni, Miss Staten Island, Jordan Lane Kowalski, Miss Staten Island’s Outstanding Teen, and Alexandra Mazzucchelli, Miss New York’s Outstanding Teen. Source: Assemblyman Matthew Titone   As noted by The Next Web, the bill itself includes a passage intended to make the case for such a bill: The safety of the…

In a research note to his clients—wouldn't it be interesting to see who pays Trip Chowdry for his financial advice? I mean, this is the guy who said in March of 2014 that Apple had 60 days to release an “iWatch” or die, one of the most unsophisticated, myopic, and arbitrary predictions ever. Then, in…

Oh yeah. I was Cool™. Anyhoo, a friend of mine suggested I wear eye liner*. This was on Halloween, and I knew it to be a splendid idea. She showed me how to apply it and after stepping back and admiring my new look in my bathroom mirror, I deemed it a success. I was…

Chatlight on a MacBook Air The device has two rows of alternating white LEDs and yellow LEDs tuned for an image that's not too warm and not too cold. Those LEDs have a cover made of diffusing plastic, and the bank of lights can be rotated to affect how much light you get. There are…