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What if the San Bernardino shooters had been using a Samsung Galaxy phone

As Apple maintains its battle with the FBI over whether it must assist unlock an iPhone utilized by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, some humans following the controversy have raised this query: what if the smartphone in question turned…

As Apple maintains its battle with the FBI over whether it must assist unlock an iPhone utilized by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, some humans following the controversy have raised this query: what if the smartphone in question turned into an Android device, along with a Samsung Galaxy S6

it’s a logical issue to ask, for the reason that Samsung is the most popular smartphone maker after Apple, consistent with comScore. Even though Apple and Samsung are near rivals, there is a key difference between them.

So we requested around to help solve that question, and here’s what we determined:

samsung galxy s6

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Does it matter who makes the telephone?

Yes. Even though Apple and Samsung are close rivals, there’s a key distinction among them. Apple controls both the hardware and the software of its iPhones. However, like maximum cellphone makers, Samsung no longer makes its running gadget called Android. Android is developed using Google; makers then customize the Andcustomizeing system to shape their options.

Ok, so it appears that evidently Apple’s brand new devices are encrypted. Are all the contemporary Android devices encrypted as well?

Well, no. Google has supported encryption. However, its beliefs on this issue may not trickle right down to the smartphones in most purchasers’ palms. Even though Google has offered some years for data on Android telephones to be encrypted until recently, implementation has been as much as producers.

With its latest working device, Marshmallow, Google requires organizations to provide encryption with the aid of default — if the phone meets the technical requirements and might encrypt data without hurting its performance. Telephones that do not fall into this camp or run an older OS could encrypt the handiest if customers decided to turn it on. If consumer upgrades to Marshmallow from a previous device, additionally, they have to turn on encryption themselves.

This means maximum Android gadgets probably aren’t encrypted. The best 1.2 percent of Android smartphones available on the market are strolling Marshmallow. And understand that Google has minimal manipulation over how and while telephones get up to date to the contemporary gadget; telephone producers and mobile carriers manage that.

According to a Samsung spokeswoman, the encryption alternative uses the default for the Galaxy S6 — and the forthcoming Marshmallow-powered Galaxy S7 — so it is truly no longer out of the realm of possibility.

The government might not be going to go to Google for assist getting into a smartphone, said Chris Soghoian, a main technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. No longer simplest is the Android landscape complex, but producers, now not Google, are in charge of signing the security certificate that proves their software program is proper, he said.

And Google wouldn’t be able to get past safety features on different organization’s devices. In keeping with Google, it generally cannot update the firmware — code that controls a phone’s chips, processors, and different hardware — on telephones it would not make, meaning it can’t regulate a smartphone to just accept new software.

So all of it comes all the way down to the telephone’s manufacturer?

It looks as if it, particularly if the authorities wanted to have a business enterprise make a new software program specifically to defeat safety features, as it does in the Apple case. Right here’s Soghoian once more: “If the authorities desired the kind of assist it is asking from Apple, it would visit Samsung rather than Google.” it might be up to Samsung, as a smartphone producer, to decide how lots assistance it might supply and whether to put up the identical fight as Apple.

But due to the fact Android is set up the way it is, law enforcement may additionally have a few more avenues of access, said Tyler Shields, vp for the method at web application protection company sign Sciences. He said that “the update chain finally ends up going from Android, to the hardware company, and to the service provider — everybody has their hand in the process.” And that means, in principle, the authorities may be able to turn to multiple actors in that chain if they wanted to supply software program modifications to a device — which the authorities need Apple to do in the case of the iPhone utilized by one of the San Bernardino shooters.” Apple has chosen to take a hard line on ownership from the chip all the manner up to software,” Shields said. “And utilizing doing that, they do not have to let people in — they don’t need to let people have the capacity to modify the product if they don’t need them to.”

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