Back at Westminster Magistrates’ Court this morning attempting to monitor a call over hearing in the case of @wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. This is the last such hearing scheduled before the extradition decision will be given on 4 January.
Thread. 1/
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1337353131315884033/pu/img/K7XE6704aKsNwl_Q.jpg)
More from Crime
My students @maxzks and Tushar Jois spent most of the summer going through every piece of public documentation, forensics report, and legal document we could find to figure out how police were “breaking phone encryption”. 1/
This was prompted by a claim from someone knowledgeable, who claimed that forensics companies no longer had the ability to break the Apple Secure Enclave Processor, which would make it very hard to crack the password of a locked, recent iPhone. 2/
We wrote an enormous report about what we found, which we’ll release after the holidays. The TL;DR is kind of depressing:
Authorities don’t need to break phone encryption in most cases, because modern phone encryption sort of sucks. 3/
I’ll focus on Apple here but Android is very similar. The top-level is that, to break encryption on an Apple phone you need to get the encryption keys. Since these are derived from the user’s passcode, you either need to guess that — or you need the user to have entered it. 4/
Guessing the password is hard on recent iPhones because there’s (at most) a 10-guess limit enforced by the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP). There’s good evidence that at one point in 2018 a company called GrayKey had a SEP exploit that did this for the X. See photo. 5/
ACLU is suing the FBI over its efforts to break into encrypted devices. https://t.co/TN8X0Slmnf
— Zack Whittaker (@zackwhittaker) December 22, 2020
This was prompted by a claim from someone knowledgeable, who claimed that forensics companies no longer had the ability to break the Apple Secure Enclave Processor, which would make it very hard to crack the password of a locked, recent iPhone. 2/
We wrote an enormous report about what we found, which we’ll release after the holidays. The TL;DR is kind of depressing:
Authorities don’t need to break phone encryption in most cases, because modern phone encryption sort of sucks. 3/
I’ll focus on Apple here but Android is very similar. The top-level is that, to break encryption on an Apple phone you need to get the encryption keys. Since these are derived from the user’s passcode, you either need to guess that — or you need the user to have entered it. 4/
Guessing the password is hard on recent iPhones because there’s (at most) a 10-guess limit enforced by the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP). There’s good evidence that at one point in 2018 a company called GrayKey had a SEP exploit that did this for the X. See photo. 5/
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ep7ZObFXYAQThM0.jpg)
Thread
For the record.
Explosions (some more 'impressive' than others) that were caught on video in the the hours AFTER the twin towers came down, but BEFORE WTC 7 came down.
Also the locations and approximate times where these were recorded . . .
https://t.co/VrSv7mnZyl
https://t.co/MGrp5wLs8A
https://t.co/JeYH2IiHiv
https://t.co/ng1NyqnEfn
For the record.
Explosions (some more 'impressive' than others) that were caught on video in the the hours AFTER the twin towers came down, but BEFORE WTC 7 came down.
Also the locations and approximate times where these were recorded . . .
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1343782946386239490/pu/img/EJ_9X1mC8n5xz-6H.jpg)
https://t.co/VrSv7mnZyl
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1343783920370782208/pu/img/Rb8wbeChCkN58qkz.jpg)
https://t.co/MGrp5wLs8A
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1343784553526116354/pu/img/lDaz_dAQDPjRTW62.jpg)
https://t.co/JeYH2IiHiv
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1343785524557873154/pu/img/m_2CHfOBbwVPbyan.jpg)
https://t.co/ng1NyqnEfn
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1343788103895412737/pu/img/7SjgmOoJoZueT7j_.jpg)
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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ
1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE
2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n
3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)
(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)
4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.
For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3
5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq6XdzvVAAEoKwf.jpg)
2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq6XzacVYAEA8tk.jpg)
3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)
(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq6X70oU8AAgR5n.jpg)
4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.
For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq6YQHgVYAMu3LW.jpg)
5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq6YcrjVYAE491g.jpg)