Apple Deluged by Federal Demands to Decrypt iPhones

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Apple receives so many police demands to decrypt seized iPhones that it has created a “waiting list” to handle the deluge of requests, CNET has learned.

Court documents show that federal agents were so stymied by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a Kentucky man accused of distributing crack cocaine that they turned to Apple for decryption help last year.

An agent at the ATF, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “contacted Apple to obtain assistance in unlocking the device,” U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote in a recent opinion. But, she wrote, the ATF was “placed on a waiting list by the company.”

A search warrant affidavit prepared by ATF agent Rob Maynard says that, for nearly three months last summer, he “attempted to locate a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency with the forensic capabilities to unlock” an iPhone 4S. But after each police agency responded by saying they “did not have the forensic capability,” Maynard resorted to asking Cupertino.

Because the waiting list had grown so long, there would be at least a 7-week delay, Maynard says he was told by Joann Chang, a legal specialist in Apple’s litigation group. It’s unclear how long the process took, but it appears to have been at least four months.

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Republicans Call for Depositions in Benghazi Probe, Amid Revelation Clinton Barely Interviewed

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Congressional Republicans on Sunday pressed their investigation into the Benghazi attacks, suggesting depositions for high-ranking officials and more whistle-blowers testifying amid further questions about why then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not thoroughly interviewed about the issue.

Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told “Fox News Sunday” that more potential and self-proclaimed “whistle-blowers” might come forward after three of them – career State Department foreign service employees – testified last week before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.

“We have had people come forward because of the (hearing) and say we would also like to talk,” the Michigan Republican told “Fox News Sunday.” “I do think we’re going to see more whistle-blowers. Certainly my committee has been contacted; I think other committees as well.”

Rogers’ remarks came as Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. ambassador who helped write a report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his assessment but absolved Clinton.

“We knew where the responsibility rested,” Pickering told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “They’ve tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made.”

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Benghazi Whistle-Blower a Democrat, Voted for Hillary and Obama Twice

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A key Benghazi whistle-blower who has allegedly been punished for speaking out against the administration is a registered Democrat who voted for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The lawyer of Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, confirmed the information to The Daily Caller on Saturday.

According to the lawyer, Victoria Toensing, Hicks voted for Clinton during the 2008 primary, and for then-Illinois Sen. Obama in the 2008 general election. He again voted for Obama in 2012.

“The fact is he is a registered Democrat in Virginia. The fact is he voted for Hilary in the primary and Obama and then again for Obama,” Toensing said.

Toensing added that she did not know he was a Democrat until the day before the hearing.

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Democratic Strategist: Party ‘In Decline’

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Photo Credit: APOne of the Democrats’ most veteran strategists warns that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama is no longer on the scene.

“Since Obama was elected President, the Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats,” Doug Sosnik, the political director in Bill Clinton’s White House, writes in a new memo.

While Republican branding problems get the lion’s share of attention, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has declined by 15 points since Obama took power. A Pew Research Center survey this January showed that the Democratic Party was viewed favorably by 47 percent of Americans, down from 62 percent in Jan. 2009.
With the likelihood of gridlock and near-record-low confidence in public institutions, Sosnik expects 2014 to bring the fourth change election in the past eight years.

“This puts Senate Democrats in a vulnerable position, while threatening Republican’s control of the House as well as their sizeable numerical advantage in the governorships across the country,” writes Sosnik, who advised Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race and now does consulting work for a variety of private-sector clients.

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Duck Dynasty Stars Threatened to Walk from AE Over Guns and God

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A North Carolina radio station, 93.1 “The Wolf,” reported this past week that the A&E network had supposedly received complaints from people “about how A&E’s show Duck Dynasty shows praying and using guns all the time.” These people had asked A&E “to remove the show from TV.”

Apparently, the network then contacted the family’s patriarch, Phil Robertson, and asked, “can we stop the praying and the guns?” Robertson responded with an ultimatum: “if We Cant Pray to God on the show, we will not do the show.”

He went on to explain, “God and Guns are apart of our everyday lives to remove either of them from the show is unacceptable.”

Looks like the Duck Commander won this battle as A&E has reportedly signed the family up for another season. And why wouldn’t they? The Duck Dynasty’s message has made it one of cable’s top-rated shows.

Gallup Poll: 58% of Americans Oppose All or Most Abortions

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Photo Credit: Life NewsWith the murder trial of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell in full swing, a new Gallup poll of Americans nationwide find well over half oppose all or virtually all abortions.

Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-7, find 58 percent of Americans want either all or almost all abortions illegal — with 20% saying it should be illegal in all circumstances and 38% favoring it in only in a few circumstances.

Just 39 percent of Americans support all or most abortions remaining legal, with only 26% of Americans favoring legalized abortion under any circumstances (the position of Planned Parenthood and President Barack Obama) and 13% favoring legality under most circumstances.

The poll also showed varying groups of Americans also strongly oppose abortions and want it illegal in all or most circumstances. Some 59 percent of men and 57 percent of women want all or most abortions illegal as do 57 percent of young Americans under the age of 34. Republicans want all or most abortions illegal on a 78-21 percentage point margin while 59 percent of independents and even 43 percent of Democrats oppose all or most abortions.

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Janitors Claim Discrimination Due to Lack of Spanish Translations

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A group of Spanish-speaking custodial workers in Colorado have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the Auraria Higher Education Center in Denver discriminated against them by failing to provide Spanish translations.

The complaint, filed last week by a dozen custodial workers, contends that the employees suffered unfair working conditions because the AHEC failed to provide Spanish translations of policies and procedures.

“Other higher education facilities including CU and UNC provide information to their custodial employees in a number of different languages,” Tim Markham, attorney for Colorado WINS, the union representing the workers, said in a statement. “We’ve been discussing this with Auraria for a year with no movement on their part, and this is the final step.”

AHEC vice president Blaine Nickeson told The Daily Caller that AHEC — the state agency which oversees the operations of the campus for Metropolitan State University of Denver, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver — has not yet seen the complaint but is aware of it from news reports.

“We’re not aware of any state statue that requires translation into a native language or any state policy that requires it either,” Nickeson said.

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Grassley: Democratic Senator Baucus Retiring Because of Obamacare Trainwreck

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreDemocratic senator Max Baucus is retiring because he is “fed up” with the Affordable Care Act, according to his Republican colleague Chuck Grassley. Speaking at Friday night’s Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa, Grassley told the audience the Montana senator is leaving office ”because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck.”

Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, played a key role in writing the 2010 law.

Grassley said that dissatisfaction with the health-care bill exists across party lines, describing a “bipartisan coalition in Washington” that considers the implementation of the law a disaster.

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Over 500 Pounds of Explosives Stolen from Montana Federal Storage Facility

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Photo Credit: APAround the same time the nation was transfixed on the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers last month, thieves on the other side of the country pulled off a little-noticed heist — swiping 559 pounds of explosives from a federal storage facility in Montana.

As of Friday, not one ounce of it has been found.

The incident, federal officials believe, was not terrorism-related. But it’s the latest to raise security concerns in an age when authorities are warning about the desire of violence-bent terrorists to inflict mass casualties with bombs.

Rep. Steve Daines, Montana’s only congressman, told FoxNews.com he’s “deeply concerned” about the theft in his state and will be “closely monitoring” the investigation.

The explosives were stolen from a locked U.S. Forest Service bunker near Billings. Thieves took off with various emulsion-type explosives, cast boosters and detonating cord.

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Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform

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Photo Credit: National Institutes of HealthThe immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

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