California Joins New York in Effort to Weaken Smartphone Encryption

[Huracan]

In this case I am on the side of Tim Cook. I am sick and tired of people trying to destroy our rights by providing childish and unrealistic scenarios. I think what we are seeing here is the true face of what this is, becoming a surveillance state. It is pretty obvious that if the phones can be unencrypted easily, terrorists and seasoned criminals would stop using them and use something else, therefore only the regular fellows will be affected by these backdoors.

 

[Nevaborn]

Only a fool would ever trust the word of a politician. The fact is one day a tragedy will occur and the government be it law enforcement or elected official will blame Apple or Google for the incident that they could not gain evidence to prevent it. However the blame falls flat at the feet of law enforcement and politicians alike. They were all complicit for decades in ignoring the rights and privacies of their citizens.

Instead of spying on your own people making good honest hardworking citizens afraid to engage in the world try actual detective work and when you have evidence that would warrant a search then ask the person.

I say ask the person because as long as the search was confidential I do my care if the government looks at my browsing history. They wil see a few movie streams a load of Netflix too much money spent on Amazon and a bit of porn. No different and probably a lot less scarier than what law enforcement, elected officials and politicians get up to.

Tim is right to say no back doors, anyone can walk through them and it is very difficult to figure out who would be the good and the bad that do.

 

[HVDynamo]

If a warrant is required, then I'm actually okay with this. Obviously the police do need information to help fight crimes. There just needs to be restraints on WHEN they can do things like this, and WHAT kind of information they can actually use...

Problem is that the act of including this backdoor opens the possibility of hackers finding and exploiting it. Just because they are only supposed to use it one way doesn't mean they will in actuality. People in power tend to flex their muscles, and in the wrong hands this will be misused, regulations or not. This is why privacy is so important.

 

[michaelz]

Will anyone knowingly buy a phone with back door?

 

[robbyx]

Will anyone knowingly buy a phone with back door?

Absolutely. Most people's response to the Snowden revelations was "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide."

 

[mrjayviper]

Will anyone knowingly buy a phone with back door?

only Android phones running marshmallow have default encryption and that's less than 5%.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Seeing how Apple's headquarters are in California, what are the odds that Apple would double down and threaten moving Apple headquarters to somewhere else... say, to Austin, Texas or such? Or for that matter, move it out of the country.

 

[logicstudiouser]

There are pros and cons for both side. Good debate

Umm... no. There are only CONS. Why dispose of your rights for a false sense of security?

 

[soupcan]

Well, they're fighting Apple on their own ground.

That's bad for the state, because Apple will win this fight. Simply because they're Apple.

 

[Eraserhead]

Seeing how Apple's headquarters are in California, what are the odds that Apple would double down and threaten moving Apple headquarters to somewhere else... say, to Austin, Texas or such? Or for that matter, move it out of the country.

I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Wahlstrm]

Yeah, since $1000 iPhones are the most common type of "burner" that criminals use this makes perfect sense.. It's never those $10-20 pre-paid phones they use..

 

[Superhai]

This is a great idea!!
Now I can hack all the young cali-girls phones and put their (semi)nude pictures on my jailbait-sites, or even better pressure them to do fun stuff (for a small buck) if they don't want their pictures there. No need to use complicated trafficked chicks anymore. After all they are good girls, and therefore have nothing to hide!

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I think what drives me craziest is that hardcore criminals can use other encryption tools.

Like others are saying, these types of legislations don't do much to stop the "bad guys" and can create significant problems for regular users.

 

[Technarchy]

Seeing how Apple's headquarters are in California, what are the odds that Apple would double down and threaten moving Apple headquarters to somewhere else... say, to Austin, Texas or such? Or for that matter, move it out of the country.

Apple should start flexing real muscle if liberal states continue to demand police state control of encryption on devices and government sanctioned attacks on privacy.

 

[You are the One]

The greedy officers of the system of domination and control are gradually loosing their minds. They seem confident they have the sheep under enough control to go all in. The sheep would be us, sedated by reality shows, social media, problems, bad health and terrorism and all the rest in the artificial society of fear and scarcity.

When I see this discussion in a tech-forum I get quite hopeful.

A lot of people are starting to wake up and question the paradigm of an eternal "war-on-terror" as well as the resultant fascistic police state.

 

[MacBH928]

Personally I always believed governments have these super-expensive hardware and PHD holders that can track and unlock anything they want.

As for the best of privacy we can always relay on open source software and hardware like a linux phone.

btw, thanks for everyone who contributes to free alternative software. You made a difference

 

[Tech198]

I like this guy (Copper), he's talkin on my level

However privacy is a reason to keep private.... While i can understand the need to circumvent and provide back-doors in everything, including iPhones, the government just wants to have "no privacy at all" but is just using the term "so we can catch bad guys" as a poor excuse.

Personally, i would rather keeping going in the front door, but that's just me.

if the governments want it, the'll get it.... How easy, or hard shouldn't really matter as there needs to be a md-point to keep both parties happy. They just want tings too easy, so they can catch people quicker..

The only reason why we don't think encryption is a bad idea on desktops, is we've gotten use to it, and it's not done by default. Maybe, that's the key.... make it an option on iOS to grant both the same... I dunno.

 

[leroypants]

The iPhone has been recommended by child molesters to other child molesters and child phonorgapher because Apple wants to protect them and hamper law enforcement bringing justice to their victims.

 

[ke-iron]

It's all fun and games unlocking criminal devices until they turn against you and want to unlock yours. (The same big boys who voted for it)

This is the government we're talking about and they have zero restraint when it comes to matters like this. They just can't control themselves smh.

 

[zioxide]

Personally I always believed governments have these super-expensive hardware and PHD holders that can track and unlock anything they want.

They don't. The government struggles to get good programmers and computer scientists. Look at how incompetent most government tech services is. Case in point: the OPM data breach or the healthcare.gov website debacle.

I remember reading an article a year or two ago about the FBI not being able to get good programmers because of drug testing. That, and they pay crap compared to the private sector.

As for the best of privacy we can always relay on open source software and hardware like a linux phone.

btw, thanks for everyone who contributes to free alternative software. You made a difference

Yup. The politicians need to open their eyes though to this open source community and realize that no matter what they try to do to iOS and Android, there will always be thousands of other open source encryption solutions freely available on the internet. The cat is out of the bag and it's not going back in.

 

[FieldingMellish]

Noteworthy that this is coming from the east and west coasts and not from flyover country.

 

[joe-h2o]

"Human trafficking trumps privacy, no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

Well there you go. That side of the argument is pretty clear.

How about Apple's genius engineers come up with a way so that the government can obtain entrance to a smartphone with a warrant stating to do so. Can't there be encryption keys stored at Apple on their secure servors that no theif or hacker could access?

No.

Plainly and simply, no, they can't do that. Not without making the encryption as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

 

[macnewbie91]

New York and California are like best girlfriends. They're both the 1st to jump on anything possible to limit the public from being able to do what they want. They also have the highest taxes in the nation.

 

[rdlink]

No, he's not. Google "Three Felonies a Day', and you'll see what he is trying to tell you.



It's a consequence of his first sentence. Even if you don't know something is against the law, it's not an excuse for breaking it.

But my point was that neither makes absolutely any sense in the context of the discussion.

 

[mrbrown]

I think what drives me craziest is that hardcore criminals can use other encryption tools.

Like others are saying, these types of legislations don't do much to stop the "bad guys" and can create significant problems for regular users.

The Paris terrorists used PlayStation 4s.