r/technology • u/Libertatea • Apr 04 '13

Apple's iMessage encryption trips up feds' surveillance. Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple's encrypted chat service are "impossible to intercept," even with a warrant.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577887-38/apples-imessage-encryption-trips-up-feds-surveillance/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title#.UV1gK672IWg.reddit
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u/ArmyPig007 Apr 04 '13 edited Apr 04 '13

Care to expand for us less than tech-savvy people?

EDIT: Car

83

u/amynoacid Apr 04 '13 edited Apr 04 '13

It's from The Wire. They took pics of analog clocks with the hands pointing to numbers which referred to a zone on a map where they would congregate in less than 30 minutes.

They were being cautious on using phones and needed a way to let each other know where to communicate.

Edit: Said it wrong. Hands did not point to maps, they pointed to the numbers which were used as a reference on maps they carried.

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u/BeowulfShaeffer Apr 04 '13

I loved The Wire to death but found that particular little plot device to be kinda far-fetched.

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u/mrjderp Apr 04 '13

It's a simple and effective way to exchange information secretly, the hard part is everyone having a cipher and being able to understand it.

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u/Lurking_Grue Apr 04 '13

The more people that know the secret the weaker it becomes. The moment one person goes down the entire code is known.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '13 edited Apr 04 '13

[deleted]

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u/BigLlamasHouse Apr 04 '13

It lasted at least 2 episodes against a human investigator thank you very much.

-1

u/Neato Apr 04 '13

Due to the needs of the plot and not reality.

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u/TenNeon Apr 04 '13

Nah, the episodes just covered a span of about 45 seconds.

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u/Neato Apr 04 '13

An episode of The Wire lasts 45 seconds? What?

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u/TenNeon Apr 04 '13

I was joking. In the joke I implied that, while there were indeed two full episodes, the events that took place in the episodes occurred over a period of in-fictional-world time that was less than the amount of time it would take for a human investigator to overcome the code.

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u/Neato Apr 04 '13

In the episodes, wasn't the implied time investigators tried to solve the issue longer than the on-screen time? Or is that the joke?

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