Author: Cyrus Farivar

Last Thursday, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence stepped into a notable legal battle between Defense Distributed, a group that promotes gunsmithery via 3D printing, and the State Department, which aims to halt re-publication of the relevant CAD files.

Brady Center is arguing in favor of the government, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation is on the side of Defense Distributed. The lawsuit, Defense Distributed v. Department of State, centers on whether a website that publishes CAD files—which would enable foreigners outside the US to print a firearm—violates munitions export laws. While Defense Distributed took the files down three years ago, they have since reappeared on BitTorrent sites. The case remains pending in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which has yet to schedule oral arguments.

"Not only is Appellants’ position reckless and hazardous to the safety of Americans at home and abroad, it is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution," John D. Kimball, the Brady Center’s attorney, wrote in the new amicus brief. "The Second Amendment does not protect the export of firearms or their functional equivalent."

The FBI sent Ars a statement late Saturday further clarifying its role in resetting the iCloud password on the seized iPhone 5C central to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation.

Earlier in the day a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Health Department confirmed to Ars that his agency changed the iPhone’s associated iCloud password at the request of the FBI. That action had the unintended effect of making any further iCloud backup attempts impossible, likely frustrating the terror probe. The San Bernardino County Health Department, which owns the phone, was shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s employer.

However, the Saturday evening statement, written by FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, also claimed that "we know that direct data extraction from an iOS device often provides more data than an iCloud backup contains." She did not respond to further questions by phone and e-mail.

On Friday, an Apple executive explicitly confirmed what was stated in a government court filing earlier in the day: that in the early hours of the San Bernardino terrorism investigation, county officials may have inadvertently compromised their ability to access the data on the seized iPhone 5C.

Earlier this week, Apple was given an unprecedented court order to create custom firmware for the iPhone 5C that was used by Syed Rizwan Farook. That new firmware would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times and would remove a delay between passcode attempts intended to make brute-force entry more difficult. If Apple does comply, it would allow the government to enter PIN codes in rapid succession until it gained access to the phone. Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly said it will resist this attempt, calling it a significant “overreach.” A court hearing has been scheduled for March 22, 2016, in nearby Riverside, California.

During the Friday call, the unnamed Apple executive said the company has been diligently working with the FBI to try to aid the terrorism investigation. After days of working with the FBI, the Apple proposed one final attempt to recover roughly six weeks of data that was locked on the phone.

On Friday, prosecutors asked a federal court in Riverside, California to force Apple to comply with a court order issued earlier this week to assist the FBI’s investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Apple has been ordered specifically to create a custom firmware in the seized iPhone 5C that was used by Syed Rizwan Farook, which would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times. If Apple does comply, it would allow the government to brute force access to the phone.

The 35-page motion to compel is a clear repudiation of Apple’s public position, which has been to wholly resist the court order. Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the court order an “overreach by the US government.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, reportedly will introduce legislation soon to criminalize a company’s refusal to aid decryption efforts as part of a governmental investigation. The news was first reported Thursday afternoon by the Wall Street Journal.

Burr’s office did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Burr published an op-ed in USA Today earlier today saying that Apple has “wrongly chosen to prioritize its business model above compliance with a lawfully issued court order.”

On Thursday, all-but-defunct Bitcoin miner manufacturer Butterfly Labs (BFL) finally settled with the Federal Trade Commission in a lawsuit that has dragged on since September 2014. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Kansas City next month.

For the last two and a half years, Ars has followed BFL as it has gone from being a curious hardware startup in a nascent Bitcoin mining industry to the target of a federal investigation. Customer orders totaling millions of dollars were significantly delayed or never fulfilled. Back in 2013, Ars received an early model of a BFL miner and successfully used it to mine $700 worth of bitcoins, which we sold for cash and then donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Any miners that shipped now, though, are largely worthless, as Bitcoin mining has moved to the cloud and away from individuals.

Under the terms of the new agreement, which is expected to be formally certified by the federal judge overseeing the case, BFL must pay the FTC more than $38.6 million. However, that sum will be suspended as soon as the company pays a largely symbolic $15,000 and co-founder Sonny Vleisides pays $4,000.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Riverside, California ordered Apple to help the government unlock and decrypt the iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who shot up an office party in a terrorist attack in nearby San Bernardino in December 2015.

Specifically, United States Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym mandated that Apple provide the FBI a custom firmware file, known as an IPSW file, that would likely enable investigators to brute force the passcode lockout currently on the phone, which is running iOS 9.

As Judge Pym wrote:

After sustaining a 27 percent drop in its stock price following a lawsuit filed against it by American Airlines, Gogo issued a short filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.

The statement refers to the fact that late last week, the largest airline in the United States sued Gogo, its provider of on-board Internet, over failure to allow the airline giant to end the two companies’ contract.

According to American’s civil complaint, filed late last week in state court in Tarrant County, Texas, American Airlines is free to choose another provider, but has to give Gogo six months to make a counter offer. If Gogo declines to do so, then American is free to terminate the contract.

It's no secret there are plenty of Star Trek: The Next Generation fans around Ars. Your humble correspondent himself grew up on a TNG-infused diet, replete with Picardian ideals and Rikerian manliness. So we were ecstatic after discovering a new podcast—The Greatest Generation—that is re-visiting, episode by episode, all of TNG. As of this writing, the show is just five episodes in, leaving plenty of time to catch up. Thus far it's been a lot of fun to re-visit some of these early episodes, most of which seem quite silly in retrospect.

In many ways, TNG's storytelling style—episodic—feels so ancient in the bingewatching culture of today. By comparison, it's rather vital that you watch something like The Expanse (seriously, go watch) in order to fully grok its exposition. So with TNG and other series of the 1980s and 1990s, you can easily hop around for the most part and watch them in essentially whatever order you like. Sure, hardcore fans will know that by Season 3, Cmdr. Riker grows a beard, but details, details.

That brand of storytelling lets anyone jump right into TNG and the podcast regardless of prior knowledge. And make no mistake, The Greatest Generation is solid whether or not you self-identify as a full-fledged Trekkie. The show is hosted by two guys who not only love TNG, but they love to make fun of it. (The URL for the show is: gagh.biz.) Ben Harrison, in his day job, runs a media company, Bad Character, out of New York City. His co-host, Adam Pranica, runs a production company in Seattle. Together, they are the peanut butter and chocolate of Star Trek podcasts.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state has sued the Tacoma Police Department (TPD) on behalf of four community leaders, claiming that TPD has not adequately responded to their public records requests concerning the use of cell-site simulators, or stingrays.

The Thursday lawsuit comes nine months after Washington imposed a new warrant requirement for stingray use in the state and about 15 months after local Pierce County judges imposed stricter guidelines for their use.

Stingrays are in use by both local and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide. The devices determine a target phone’s location by spoofing or simulating a cell tower. Mobile phones in range of the stingray then connect to it and exchange data with the device as they would with a real cell tower. Once deployed, stingrays intercept data from the target phone along with information from other phones within the vicinity—up to and including full calls and text messages. At times, police have falsely claimed that information gathered from a stingray has instead come from a confidential informant.