Month: February 2016

(credit: Kim Davies)

There's been ongoing dialogue about Apple's upcoming legal strategy in its battle with the government about whether it should be required to comport with a court order mandating that the Cupertino gadget maker assist the authorities in accessing a locked, encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. One legal angle that has largely been overlooked is the Fifth Amendment.

Here at Ars, we already produced a lengthy feature focusing on the All Writs Act of 1789, a law invoked by judges to order somebody to do something despite there being no law requiring them to do so. That ancient law is at the heart of the government's argument demanding that Apple write custom software to assist the authorities in unlocking the encrypted iPhone used by killer Syed Rizwan Farook, who participated in a shooting spree in December that killed 14 people. Our Ars story overlooked a Fifth Amendment defense and largely discussed a nuanced three-pronged approach to how Apple will defend its stance of not wanting to provide assistance to the government's request. If Apple is ultimately ordered to comply, Apple chief Tim Cook said it would set a "dangerous precedent."

Then on Tuesday, Bloomberg wrote that Apple will also argue in its legal papers to be filed by Friday that computer code and its cryptographic autograph are protected speech under the First Amendment and that the government cannot compel speech by Apple. Bloomberg reported:

Bill Montgomery is the Maricopa County Attorney. (credit: Gage Skidmore)

On Wednesday, an Arizona county attorney's office announced that it will immediately halt "providing iPhones as an option for replacement or upgrades for existing employees," citing the current legal battle between Apple and the Department of Justice.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook again reiterated the company’s firm commitment to privacy and its resolve to fight a new court order issued earlier this month. If the order stands up to legal challenges, Apple would be forced to create a new customized iOS firmware that would remove the passcode lockout on a seized iPhone as part of the ongoing San Bernardino terrorism investigation.

Maricopa County, the nation’s fourth most populous county, which encompasses Phoenix and the surrounding area, is also well-known for its very conservative sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

In a cryptic message posted on its website, SlySoft, a company that made several applications devoted to defeating DRM schemes, announced that it has shut down. “Due to recent regulatory requirements we have had to cease all activities relating to SlySoft Inc.,” reads the brief message. “We wish to thank our loyal customers/clients for their patronage over the years.”

SlySoft made its name by creating software capable of defeating the Content Scrambling System used by DVDs and later by defeating the Advanced Access Content System and BD+ DRM used by Blu-ray and HD DVD.

In 2016, a time when digital distribution is ubiquitous, the landscape of a decade ago seems almost quaint. Content creators were just as determined to keep video as locked down as they are today, but the battle was waged with DRMed optical discs on one side and decryption software on the other. And SlySoft’s AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD were favored weapons of Windows users who wanted to copy DRMed movies to their hard drives for personal use (and for uploading to P2P sites). Even if you didn't care too much about format-shifting, AnyDVD made it possible to skip past trailers users were forced to watch on DVD players.

Mercedes F1

Nico Rosberg puts some miles on his Mercedes W07 at the first preseason test in Barcelona.

3 more images in gallery

This week, the people that control Formula 1 racing got together in Geneva, Switzerland, to come up with some ideas to fix the sport. At first glance, it appears they might instead have broken the one bit of the show—qualifying on Saturday afternoons—that still holds any real excitement for fans. Changes to 2017's technical rules are also coming. The introduction of better head protection for drivers is welcome, but the rest of the tweaks appear—to almost everyone outside of the F1 Strategy Group and the F1 Commission—to be exactly what the doctor didn't order.

Silly season is a name often given to that time of year in sports calendars when news is slow and so, to fill pages or screens, the media reports on stories that wouldn't otherwise merit the attention. In the racing world that normally coincides with late summer, there are gaps in the schedules, people take vacations, and the media is left to speculate on rumors about who's changing teams and the like. You normally wouldn't think of F1's preseason ramp-up in this way. After all, the new-for-2016 cars are currently being unveiled, and some of the teams are testing in Barcelona this week—that stuff actually matters.

However, "silly" accurately describes the proposed changes to the qualifying process this year.

Xamarin Studio, Xamarin's development environment. (credit: Xamarin)

Microsoft will buy Xamarin, maker of .NET tooling that can build apps for iOS, Android, and OS X, for an undisclosed sum.

When Microsoft first launched .NET in the early 2000s, it promised a cross-platform environment that could reach beyond Windows. The company did publish an early FreeBSD-compatible version of .NET named Rotor, and it produced versions of its Silverlight plugin for OS X, but functionally, .NET was a Windows-only affair, with the other platforms distant memories.

In parallel with Microsoft's efforts, an open source version of .NET named Mono was created by Ximian, an open source company founded by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. Ximian was acquired by Novell in 2003, and Novell was bought by Attachmate in 2011. Attachmate laid off all Mono staff shortly after the acquisition, and de Icaza and Friedman founded Xamarin later that same year to continue their work with Mono.

(credit: Google Fiber)

Google Fiber announced plans on Wednesday to offer Internet service in San Francisco apartments, condos, and affordable housing properties.

Instead of installing its own fiber cables, Google said it will use existing fiber, allowing it to bring service to the city more quickly. Google may need to do some work outside and inside buildings to connect properties to the existing fiber, but otherwise not much construction will be required.

This is similar to a deal Google announced with a city-owned utility in Huntsville, Alabama. But in the San Francisco case, Google is not saying what entity it is leasing or buying fiber from or when it will start offering service.

(credit: Tor Project)

A federal judge in Washington has now confirmed what has been strongly suspected: that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers at its Software Engineering Institute were hired by the federal government to do research into breaking Tor in 2014. The judge also made a notable statement in his court order that "Tor users clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP addresses while using the Tor network."

However, some of the details that Tor alleged previously seem to be wrong: the research was funded by the Department of Defense, not the FBI. Tor Project Director Shari Steele told Ars earlier this year that the organization still couldn't get straight answers from CMU. According to the judge, that research was then subpoenaed by federal investigators.

The Tor Project did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Meanwhile, Kenneth Walters, a CMU spokesman, refused to answer Ars' questions, referring us only to the university's last statement, from November 2015, which hinted that the university was served with a subpoena.