I Love Irony

President Obama seems to have an ability to mistreat our allies and attempt to make friends with people who have hated us and will continue to hate us. However, some of our allies understand that despite our President, the American people support them. Israel is one of those allies that stands with us regardless of who is President.

The U.K. Daily Mail reported yesterday that the FBI has managed to get into the Apple iPhone that belonged to the San Bernardino shooter. Technical people were very concerned about who actually managed to get into the phone–fearing that a criminal would now have a mechanism that could hack any Apple iPhone. However, the truth is very reassuring.

The article reports:

An Israeli company helped the FBI in unlocking the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, according to reports. 

Israel’s Cellebrite, is a provider of mobile forensic software that says it does business with thousands of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, militaries and governments in more than 90 countries.

An official source told NBC News that the company had helped. Neither the FBI nor Cellebrite has confirmed the reports.

The FBI hacked into the iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in December in San Bernardino. 

The iPhone, issued to Farook by his employer, the county health department, was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is rather technical, but very interesting.

Thank you, Israel, for helping America deal with terrorism.

It’s Not About The Children–It’s About The Money

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you are probably aware that I am strongly opposed to Common Core. There are many reasons for this, and I need to review a few before I get to the current article regarding Common Core.

Reported here in November 2015:

Bill Gates himself has stated, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” 

Reported here in July 2014:

On the Microsoft Web site, a webpage dated April 22, 2014 entitled “Tech Essentials for Testing Success” describes in considerable detail how schools using computer-based, Common Core-aligned tests will now need to spend a bunch of money — on Microsoft products.

…Microsoft additionally advises schools to upgrade “all units” “to a minimum of 1 GB of internal memory” and to make sure their screens and processors are up to snuff. (Wouldn’t you know it: in some cases, “Power Macs are not supported.”) Schools might also need to outlay tax dollars on Internet connections and hardware such as headphones.

The primary purpose of Common Core is not to educate our children–it’s to force schools to buy Microsoft technology. There are billions of dollars at stake here, which brings me to my current story. When schools originally began buying computer products, most schools bought (or were given) Apple products. The students trained on Apple products went on to buy Apple products as adult consumers. That lesson was not lost on Bill Gates at Microsoft.

On February 12, 2016, the New Boston Post reported:

A lawsuit that aims to prevent Massachusetts voters from weighing in on the controversial Common Core educational standards has backing from people connected to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major sponsor of Common Core.

Since 2010, the year the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to implement Common Core, through last year, the Gates Foundation donated $776,431 to the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. The Alliance, a strong supporter of Common Core, is currently coordinating the lawsuit, filed last month, to block a citizen initiative that would allow Massachusetts voters in November to decide whether the state continues to use the federally approved Common Core standards or revert to its own pre-Common Core standards.

In 2007, prior to the implementation of Common Core, Massachusetts was the highest-achieving state in the country.  Opponents of Common Core, an unusually bi-partisan group of parents, teachers, education specialists, conservative activists, and anti-testing activists, say that after the state adopted the federally backed standards in 2010, Massachusetts achievement levels started to decline.

End Common Core Massachusetts, the citizens group behind the ballot question, earlier this year garnered enough signatures to advance the measure.  But on Jan. 22, ten plaintiffs sued to stop the question from reaching the voters. Plaintiffs include William Walczak who is a director of the Alliance, and Jack Dill, who is on its advisory council.

If Common Core was about improving education, why have the achievement levels in Massachusetts schools started to decline since Common Core was implemented? Common Core is a scam put over on parents and teachers that does nothing to improve the education of our children. I does, however, improve the bottom line profits of Microsoft Corporation. Parents need to begin to work to remove it. I am hoping Massachusetts will be successful with its ballot question, but in other places, school boards need to be pressured to take action against something that is detrimental to our children’s education. If it really was about the children, would any school administrators be supporting something that lowers achievement rather than raises it?

There Is A Way To Do This Legally

Yesterday The Los Angeles Times posted an article about the ongoing battle between Apple Inc. and the federal government. Apple cell phones have systems built into them that prevent someone who steals your cell phone from having access to all of your personal (and professional) information. Obviously, if you are a terrorist, this works really well. I am not a computer/cell phone-savvy person and did not understand what was going on here. The explanation you are about to hear is the result of a techie explaining the situation to me.

The article in the Los Angeles Times reports:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym in Riverside directed Apple on Tuesday to help the FBI get around the phone’s passcode protection and any auto-erase functions the device might employ.

In a statement, Cook said that such a move would undermine encryption by creating a backdoor that could potentially be used in the future on devices.

…The Manhattan district attorney‘s office said in a report issued in November that it was unable to execute 111 search warrants for smartphones over the last year because they were running on encrypted technology offered through Apple’s iOS 8 operating system.

So let’s look at some possible solutions that do not create a backdoor.

First of all, the government should need a warrant to search any cell phone. Considering this phone belonged to a terrorist shooter, that should not be a problem. Second of all, there is no reason why the government can’t turn the phone over to Apple and ask them to please provide the government with all information on the phone. Since Apple set up the programs that encrypted it, they should be able to unencrypt it. Again, I am not technically savvy, but that seems to me to be the obvious solution. In future cases where an Apple cell phone needs to be searched, a warrant shall be required, and the phone should be turned over to Apple. Therefore, no backdoor is created, and the feds can go merrily on their way with the information they need. I would be very reluctant to give the federal government a means to unencrypt any cell phone. I simply don’t trust the government with that kind of power.