As some of you might know, I was in the Wireless Engineering field for many years. Remember last year when the FBI was reporting to the public that they didn't have the resources to crack the iPhone and were petitioning Apple to allow access to their encryption? Well, that didn't ring as true to me. Unless there are details I'm not aware of, it just rang patently false. The reason why, I've told people close to me, was because there are resources online that can be easily accessed by a hacker or anyone with half a brain that could crack the iPhone. Beyond that many wireless repair stores have these devices called Cellebrites that can transfer all your contacts, photos, etc, from one phone to another without having to go through a lot of trouble. It's not a big mystery either. All publicly available. Which is why it made no sense to me from any straight-forward perspective. Just doesn't add up. I could be wrong, but doubtful.
So why were they trying to sell that story for awhile? I don't know but have some intuitions about that. But while doing research on Infragard (a Corporate partnership with the FBI...more on them in a bit) I found a clip on YouTube where they were teaching a Youth Camp how to crack phones with Cellebrite. Yes. You got that right. Teaching kids how to hack for the FBI and Corporate America. I can't make these things up.
See those projection screens in the background? They say "Infragard Cybercamp 2015 - How to Install & Use the Cellebrite UFED Reader Application". Not 2016 like the clip says at the top left corner. You need to look at the projection screens.
Still don't see it? How about a closer look...
Straight up, I'm far more disturbed they are teaching our kids to be citizen spies for Infragard. This is a program that I believe deserves a great deal more scrutiny and public oversight than it's currently receiving. More to the point though, regarding the iPhone, it demonstrates the FBI was simply not being forthright. They were teaching kids, through Infragard, a partnership between the FBI, Corporations and Public Safety...they were teaching these kids in 2015 how to crack smartphones. Then they were telling the media and American population that they needed Apple's assistance to crack the encryption in 2016. Yet we know now Cellebrite always had the ability to do it. So were the FBI playing dumb? Why deceive people, if that's what occurred?
Wouldn't it have made more sense to just ask one that dude in the middle there with the red ball cap who has the answers since he's teaching a class on how to do it? Or perhaps one of the kids from that Infragard class who they trained back in 2015 (a year before this Apple controversy).
Actually, please don't ask them. Leave the kids out of this, please, you soulless cowards. Why are you recruiting kids to do your spying? What are you thinking about? You are training our kids to be in, what has effectively become, an American Stasi? And no, that's not an exaggeration. Compare it to the slick corporate lingo of Infargard's description, but what you have at the end, is the same product, a Stasi. A corporate-citizen intelligence gathering network that has next to no oversight and all being done with the training and logistical support of the FBI.
Kind of strange and makes one wonder why we haven't heard more about it, eh?