Note To Readers: This report is based on the assumption that Apple is on the up-and-up about their refusal to create backdoor tools for the FBI. As we know, however, intelligence agencies are experts at disinformation, so for all we know it is possible that backdoors already exist and what we have witnessed this week insofar as the encryption debate is concerned could be a psy-op designed to convince the public that their encryption is unhackable by government agencies. From a security perspective, we must assume that no electronic device is safe from prying eyes, as most theories on these matters are based on publicly known technologies and do not take into account top secret developments with quantum computing or advanced DARPA initiatives. 

Earlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an open letter to the American public about the FBI’s attempts to compel the company to crack the iPhone of the San Bernadino Jihad attackers, saying that such a tool for the government is too dangerous to create. Google, Facebook and Twitter have now joined Apple in the phone encryption battle.

As explained by The Intercept, here’s a brief overview of what the FBI wants Apple to do:

The most obvious way to try and crack into your iPhone, and what the FBI is trying to do in the San Bernardino case, is to simply run through every possible passcode until the correct one is discovered and the phone is unlocked. This is known as a “brute force” attack.

…

One obstacle to testing all possible passcodes is that the iPhone intentionally slows down after you guess wrong a few times. An attacker can try four incorrect passcodes before she’s forced to wait one minute. If she continues to guess wrong, the time delay increases to five minutes, 15 minutes, and finally one hour. There’s even a setting to erase all data on the iPhone after 10 wrong guesses.

…

This is where the FBI’s requested backdoor comes into play. The FBI is demanding that Apple create a special version of the iPhone’s operating system, iOS, that removes the time delays and ignores the data erasure setting. The FBI could install this malicious software on the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone, brute force the passcode, unlock the phone, and access all of its data. And that process could hypothetically be repeated on anyone else’s iPhone.

The problem the FBI has is that the iPhone and other phones out there require a time-delay between passcode entries. Moreover, when a series of wrong passcodes is entered the delay is extended to as much as one hour, so even the fastest computer on the planet is rendered impotent while it waits for this delay to reset.

So the FBI is stuck using your iPhone to test passcodes. And it turns out that your iPhone is kind of slow at that: iPhones intentionally encrypt data in such a way that they must spend about 80 milliseconds doing the math needed to test a passcode, according to Apple. That limits them to testing 12.5 passcode guesses per second, which means that guessing a six-digit passcode would take, at most, just over 22 hours.

A six-digit passcode can be unlocked by the FBI in roughly a day. But according to the math behind the security feature, adding just 5 more digits could make hacking the phone in your lifetime almost impossible with current computing technologies (we’ll save quantum computing concepts for another time):

What if you use a longer passcode? Here’s how long the FBI would need:

• seven-digit passcodes will take up to 9.2 days, and on average 4.6 days, to crack
• eight-digit passcodes will take up to three months, and on average 46 days, to crack
• nine-digit passcodes will take up to 2.5 years, and on average 1.2 years, to crack
• 10-digit passcodes will take up to 25 years, and on average 12.6 years, to crack
• 11-digit passcodes will take up to 253 years, and on average 127 years, to crack
• 12-digit passcodes will take up to 2,536 years, and on average 1,268 years, to crack
• 13-digit passcodes will take up to 25,367 years, and on average 12,683 years, to crack

As The Intercept notes, remembering a totally random 11-digit passcode may seem like a daunting task, but anyone who was around before cell phone contact lists probably had at least five to ten different phone numbers memorized for family and close friends. This is essentially the same thing.

As a side note, using your phone’s fingerprint scanner as the primary mechanism for security is not sufficient.

First, a determined hacker, especially a state-sponsored one, could easily find a way to get your fingerprint, just as was done to Germany’s Minister of Defence in 2014 when hackers used internet photos of her hand to re-create her fingerprint. Second, and perhaps more importantly, a Virginia court has ruled you can be forced by police to unlock a phone or computer with your fingerprint – but not your password:

A Virginia state trial court held that a suspect “cannot be compelled [by the police] to produce his passcode to access his smartphone but he can be compelled to produce his fingerprint to do the same.”

….

Judge Frucci ruled that phone passwords were entitled to protection under the Fifth Amendment’s promise that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”He stressed that the password existed only in the defendant’s mind, and thus compelling the defendant to provide a passcode constituted a testimonial communication. The Fifth Amendment protects against such compulsion.

We live in a brave new world, and while you may think you have nothing to hide, keep in mind that with the literal millions of laws on the books in the United States the average American commits three felonies per day. Thus, if a law enforcement agency were to target you, they would most certainly find evidence of wrong doing and you can be assured that your phone will be one of the first pieces of evidence they will target.

Also Read:

“Too Dangerous to Create”: Apple Defies FBI Order to Build Backdoor Software To Unlock Any iPhone

New “Geo Fence” Technology Lets DHS, FBI and Apple Command Your Phone’s Camera and Microphone

Hackers Cause Blackout For First Time In History

What Is The Best Method Of Rebellion Against Tyranny?

In 2014 a new Federal law made it possible for pension funds to cut benefits for their recipients. Much to the protest of pensioners, the government and numerous unions supporting the change cited pension plans that were in imminent danger of collapse, saying that the only way to save the funds was to cut benefits to potentially millions of recipients. Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court took things a step further when they opined that the government has the right to fully seize 401(k) and pension funds that were being poorly managed.

Of course, most Americans were either not paying attention or completely ignored the ramifications of the new rules set forth by their government because, well, anyone who talks about the potential for a collapse of pension funds or the economy is, as President Barack Obama so eloquently noted in his recent State of the Union Speech, “peddling fiction.”

Except in October of last year the canary in the coal mine fell over and died when Illinois announced that the State was posting pension payments because it ran out of money.

Fast forward a few more months and things have been taken to the next level. The Central State pension fund in Kansas became the first such fund to take advantage of the 2014 law as 400,000 Americans who depend on their monthly pension income to pay for such things as their mortgage, groceries and medical expenses saw an average of $1,400 per month sliced of their monthly benefits.

Dale Dorsey isn’t happy.

After working 33 years, he’s facing a 55% cut to his pension benefits, a blow which he says will “cripple” his family and imperil the livelihood of his two children, one of whom is in the fourth grade and one of whom is just entering high school.

Dorsey attended a town hall meeting in Kansas City on Tuesday where retirees turned out for a discussion on “massive” pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, and which will almost certainly go broke within the next decade.

“A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension to propose [deep] cuts, many of them by half or more, as a way to perhaps save the fund,” The Kansas City Star wrote earlier this week adding that “two much smaller pensions also have sought similar relief under the law, and still more pensions are significantly underfunded.”

And if you think this is the end of it, consider the words of long time teamster member Jay Perry who says the writing is on the wal:

“What’s happening to us is a microcosm of what’s going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States”

It was all fun and games during the boom times when governments and companies promised pensioners exorbitant retirements based on an unlimited growth rate model. Now reality is setting in.

And keep in mind that this is just the first part of the coming retirement fund destruction. As we noted above, the Supreme Court ruling gives the government the “right” to step in and seize these underperforming funds.

So, the first step is to give pension funds the ability to cut benefits, which we are seeing now and will continue to see going forward as funds all over the country struggle to keep the benefits flowing. Next, the government will identify these funds as under-performing and mismanaged, at which point they will outright seize the entire industry just as they did with health care.

The pain is coming, America. You’d better be prepared to deal with the fallout.

Also Read:

13 Urgent Reports To Help You Collapse-Proof Your Life

Prepare For Economic Collapse And Other Disasters: The Prepper’s Blueprint

New Federal Law Targets Retirement Benefit Cuts: “We Thought Our Pension Was Secure”

Coming for Your Funds: Supremes “Justify Seizure of Pension Funds to PROTECT Pensioners”

Peter Schiff Warns: “The Whole Economy Has Imploded… Collapse Is Coming”

7 Jobs That Are Going to Survive the Next Economic Crash

Mark Levin: Government Is “Simulating the Collapse of Our Financial System, the Collapse of Our Society and the Potential for Widespread Violence”