"Riana Pfefferkorn, a legal fellow at Stanford University, agreed. She also said that this new software design choice may not specifically be about enhancing Fifth Amendment protections and trying to frustrate police efforts.
"If a passcode is now required in order to sync a device with a new machine, that has practical utility for security purposes above and beyond the context of a device seized by law enforcement (for example if a thief, or an abusive partner, gets hold of the device while it's unlocked)," she e-mailed Ars. "Bear in mind also that if law enforcement's goal is to obtain a backup of the device, they can already serve legal process on Apple to get Apple to turn over the last device backup that was uploaded to iCloud (if that feature is turned on). That backup may not be super recent, however (as in the Syed Farook case).""
- Date Published:09/11/2017
- Original Publication:Ars Technica