California Joins New York in Effort to Weaken Smartphone Encryption

[leroypants]

Yes, you're absolutely right. There is a bunch of stuff on my phone that I want to hide. From law enforcement, from you, from criminals, and from thieves. Because none of it is any of your business. Period. Your inference that just because I want my constitutionally protected privacy makes me somehow shady is exactly why you have absolutely no understanding of the meaning of the Bill of Rights.

You are, in fact part of the problem. You have no clue exactly how close your line of thinking is to fascism.

Another post about your "constitutionally protected privacy" just goes to show your outright ignorance on the subject.

Child rapists and child pornographers all across the country thank you for making their lives easier and safer by removing the ability of law enforcement to stop them from committing crimes and not allowing victims to get the justice they deserve.

 

[tongxinshe]

The real problem is that there are enough bad guys in the government, which include CIA, FBI and local low officers. Dangerous route!

 

[jlc1978]

For those who would support this ridiculous line of thinking, how would you feel about the government being able to regulate who can own a paper shredder, or an incinerator?

Since there is nothing that says you cannot destroy information on your cell phone in the proposed laws your strawman comment is irrelevant to this discussion.

Oh, right... Merely...
The problem is that Apple does not just sell phones in the US. It sells phone everywhere in the world.
How the hell will they feel if the US government, or even worse, any state government, has a backdoor into the system.
If you open it for one, you open it for EVERYONE. Even people you may not agree with.

Much of that would depend on how Apple chose to implement the means to access data absent the owner's passcode. Nor does it mean that they would need to store encryption keys for every phone they sold worldwide. They could only keep ones for phones destined for sale in the US.

I don't necessarily like the proposed laws but using warrants to obtain evidence when someone refuses to turn it over has been a fundamental part of our judicial system since its founding. Technology has now advanced to the point where warrants no longer are effective in obtaining evidence in some cases; and a discussion on the pros and cons of steps proposed in the two bills is important as it touches on many aspects of the law and how it should be changed in the wake of new technology.

 

[thewap]

The problem is that the *pros* are the *con* games. What % of the cellphone population are involved in human trafficking? What crime syndicate leaves *evidence* on personal cellphones or stays on the grid? The justification argument for for even more *legalized* surveillance is ludicrous, just as ludicrous as the justification of safety trumps rights , as without rights there is no true *safety* from anyone wanting to abuse rights.

 

[rdlink]

Another post about your "constitutionally protected privacy" just goes to show your outright ignorance on the subject.

Child rapists and child pornographers all across the country thank you for making their lives easier and safer by removing the ability of law enforcement to stop them from committing crimes and not allowing victims to get the justice they deserve.

There's nothing in the world that will stop all of these boogeymen from putting the same protections on their phones that you claim are causing rampant injustice to people all over America.

If you want to relinquish the important freedoms that countless men and women have sacrificed so much, including their lives to give you that's your choice. But I am not about to line up like a sheep just because you don't have the huevos
to look the cops in the eye and say, "Do your job the way our founding fathers intended."

Fascists all over the world thank you for the orderly manner in which you are lining up to be their servant.

And since you find it necessary to resort to personal attacks and insinuations, and attempt to belittle those who value their freedoms a more than you apparently do I'm finished debating with you on the subject.

 

[Marlor]

This clearly doesn't go far enough.

They should add a rider to the legislation to ensure that all citizens keep a door key under their doormat. After all, if you're not a bad guy, doing evil things, then you have nothing to hide. Locked doors simply hinder police work, and have no place in civil society.

 

[rdlink]

Since there is nothing that says you cannot destroy information on your cell phone in the proposed laws your strawman comment is irrelevant to this discussion.

Ah, the old "strawman comment" tactic to arguing against someone who understands the issue better than yourself.

It's completely relevant. Since you apparently don't understand that what these morons who want to pass this legislation are saying is that Apple and others must keep the keys to access my communications on their system, so that it matters not what I delete or don't delete. There will always be a fingerprint of ALL of my communications in someone's hands outside of my control.

Your asinine argument that my privacy can be protected by just deleting a text or email that's already gone across the wire shows a complete lack of understanding on your part. The parallel would be that a document shredder or incinerator would have to snap and store a picture of every document that I shred or burn before it's destroyed.
[doublepost=1453492424][/doublepost]

The problem is that the *pros* are the *con* games. What % of the cellphone population are involved in human trafficking? What crime syndicate leaves *evidence* on personal cellphones or stays on the grid? The justification argument for for even more *legalized* surveillance is ludicrous, just as ludicrous as the justification of safety trumps rights , as without rights there is no true *safety* from anyone wanting to abuse rights.

Wish I could up vote this a hundred times.

 

[Renzatic]

Child rapists and child pornographers all across the country thank you for making their lives easier and safer by removing the ability of law enforcement to stop them from committing crimes and not allowing victims to get the justice they deserve.

I guess the police will have to do their work the good old fashioned way: sting operations and undercover work.

Any law that directly relies upon a government not to abuse a position its freely granting itself shouldn't be trusted prima facie. Yeah, it's true that allowing law enforcement unfettered access to the information on our smartphones, tablets, and computers will stop quite a few child pornographers, terrorists, and the like, but so would warrantless search and seizures. It's yet another one of those "road to hell is paved with good intentions" measures.

Basically, if it can be abused, it will be abused. We can't curtail a few of our rights to privacy because of the good that could potentially be done, because we have to worry about the bad that can and will be done in its name.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

It's beyond disgusting how people like you would rather have 13 year old girls raped and sold on a daily basis than give by human traffickers than gove law enforcement the tools to protect children and solve murders.

I wonder what you are so desperate to hide on your phone....

Does this type of shrill hysteria still work on anyone?

 

[leroypants]

I guess the police will have to do their work the good old fashioned way: sting operations and undercover work.

Any law that directly relies upon a government not to abuse a position its freely granting itself shouldn't be trusted prima facie. Yeah, it's true that allowing law enforcement unfettered access to the information on our smartphones, tablets, and computers will stop quite a few child pornographers, terrorists, and the like, but so would warrantless search and seizures. It's yet another one of those "road to hell is paved with good intentions" measures.

Basically, if it can be abused, it will be abused. We can't curtail a few of our rights to privacy because of the good that could potentially be done, because we have to worry about the bad that can and will be done in its name.

It's disgusting knowing how you and others support the rights of a child rapists and his right to keep child pornography encrypted so the police can't prosecute them.

Simple yes or no, would it bother you if rapists or murderers got away with their crimes because of encryption?

 

[manu chao]

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 servers that no thief or hacker could access?

Because no hacker as ever managed to hack into a corporate server? That is the fundamental problem, if Apple stores the keys somewhere then anybody managing to crack that server has access to all encryption keys. Look at Sony, look at the continuous stream of news of company X getting hacked and loosing customer and/or credit card data.

You could try to make that harder by storing the encryption keys on an air-gapped system and only sending out encryptions keys to law enforcement on physical media (eg, a cop drives by and collects a USB stick). But even air-gapped systems can be penetrated (eg, via those USB sticks). And how do the encryption keys get from the phone (after having been set there after phone assembly) to the air-gapped system? Via a non-air-gapped server?

Also, having a hard-coded encryption key (set during manufacturing) that cannot be changed by the user in itself makes the system less secure. Someone can attack the system that sets the key (which for all we know is located in China) for example. Manipulate the random number generator that creates the key to make it much less random (a popular method among spy agencies, but once it leaks out when and how they did it, others can exploit that fact as well).

 

[Renzatic]

It's disgusting knowing how you and others support the rights of a child rapists and his right to keep child pornography encrypted so the police can't prosecute them.

Simple yes or no, would it bother you if rapists or murderers got away with their crimes because of encryption?

Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Leroy?
[doublepost=1453494042][/doublepost]

Does this type of shrill hysteria still work on anyone?

Apparently it does.

Fact is, being able to freely search someone's property isn't the only way to catch child rapists and pornographers in the act, nor will it allow them to get away scot free if we don't implement it. For one thing, rapists leave tons of physical evidence behind. Pornographers have to devise meeting places to trade their...er...illegal material. All the police have to do is get a potential perp to send them these...er...illegal materials, and they're busted.

You know, basically the same things police have been done long, LONG before smartphones and smartphone encryption became a thing.

 

[alexgowers]

I love that you can encode something with encryption that is impossible to break but somehow a mobile phones is not allowed to do that, i can't see how this is enforceable? illegal trade in cross border iPhones?

If you want to hide things then you can, even if it's illegal, it's up to law enforcement to catch the criminals another way, not all evidence is wrapped up in a mobile phone anyway. Creating a backdoor is like saying, everyone should suffer cyber crime and insecurities because we can't be arsed to go out there and catch criminals IRL. I prefer police IRL.

 

[bradl]

I love that you can encode something with encryption that is impossible to break but somehow a mobile phones is not allowed to do that, i can't see how this is enforceable? illegal trade in cross border iPhones?

You bring up an interesting point, that hearkens back to the Phil Zimmerman/PGP days.

With cryptography falling under the category of munitions back in the mid 1990s, the export of said munitions ran afoul of federal law, which is why the crackdown on Zimmerman started. However, the way he got around it was by publishing the source code to PGP and cryptography used, which was comparable to free speech. Subsequently, cryptography had been reclassified as not being munitions around 2000, so encryption is not illegal, nor should be forced to be broken, especially if a phone is bought, sold, or exported out of the USA.

With that being said, the sale of phones in and across state lines domestically, falls under the authority of Congress (Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution (the Commerce Clause) ), so a state law here could and would run afoul of that clause. So if need be, a state like Illinois could sue the state of California or New York over this bill (should it become law), and lose.

BL.

 

[dk001]

The cross section of views, informed, uninformed, totally wacky, thoughtful, knowledgeable, ludicrous, etc... is flat out amazing.

Back to my Macallan...

 

[thermodynamic]

Another idiot politician trying to make laws about things they do not understand.

That's a simplification. You don't know how everything in a car works yet you know how to drive it and know there are things you oughtn't do with it. Who know how a faucet works but I'd love to see you try plumbing. But car makers, who understand what they make, might have more to gain by getting government to do what it wants and ostensibly because the car maker knows better even though we both know the car maker exists to make the car maker rich, even at government and taxpayer expense if the opportunity were there.

Yes, my response is a simplification too, which might be the point...

Or even the gun rights advocates, who are buying up because they perceive conspiracy or takeover, and citing revolution. They scare me a hell of a lot more than any lobbyist and none of them are stopping the bad people with guns, since conceal/carry states are no safer from orange hair creepazoids slaughtering dozens in places where guns were allowed - the good guys all idiot cowards too? See, simplification is fun!

Tim Cook should suspend the entire new Apple Campus construction project until this bill is tossed. Watch how fast the government would cave if it looks like they would lose all that economic benefit of Apple building their new campus there.

Benefit to whom? Apple doesn't give a rat, apart from what excuses it can cook up to blame America and the West to justify division while it profits from everything. Apple exists to profit for Apple, which is why it has lobbyists vying government for riders, bending laws, subsidies, and other freebies. Articles saying how Trump wants to make America poorer have no weight because anyone with a brain has seen worker wages effectively stagnated or lowered (adj. for inflation) over the last decade or two, to say nothing of the sheer increase of necessities' costs, especially college and medical - things we need to remain competitive and for a pro-life nation to be true to the name "pro-life"...

 

[Khalanad75]

Just an insight into why this guy choose human trafficking for his argument.... it is actually something of a major problem here in the greater Sacramento area.

With that said, I don't care for the proposed law. There is better way to catch crimnals without making everyday citizens out to be criminals.

 

[VulchR]

Another idiot politician trying to make laws about things they do not understand.


Tim Cook should suspend the entire new Apple Campus construction project until this bill is tossed. Watch how fast the government would cave if it looks like they would lose all that economic benefit of Apple building their new campus there.

An disable their phones in New York....

EDIT: I think I might buy a new iPhone sooner than later just to piss governments off.

 

[bradl]

Just an insight into why this guy choose human trafficking for his argument.... it is actually something of a major problem here in the greater Sacramento area.

With that said, I don't care for the proposed law. There is better way to catch crimnals without making everyday citizens out to be criminals.

As a local in Sacramento, I can see this as well. But I sure as hell don't agree with this bill. The guy sounds of the same ilk that persecuted Zimmerman and gave us the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (and I know that one personally; Ed Zorinsky (author of the bill) was one of my Senators).

BL.

 

[dk001]

Just an insight into why this guy choose human trafficking for his argument.... it is actually something of a major problem here in the greater Sacramento area.

With that said, I don't care for the proposed law. There is better way to catch crimnals without making everyday citizens out to be criminals.

He chose that as it can be linked to children; a topic we are all sensitive to, and missing children was already used, unsuccessfully, by the FBI. Local issues may influence but at a state level they mean little unless it is a broad issue.

 

[Khalanad75]

He chose that as it can be linked to children; a topic we are all sensitive to, and missing children was already used, unsuccessfully, by the FBI. Local issues may influence but at a state level they mean little unless it is a broad issue.

I think we are the #2 hub for trafficking.

http://fox40.com/2013/07/29/sacramento-a-hub-of-human-trafficking-activity/

 

[Eraserhead]

That is not what the bills require; they merely require ensuring the ability to search exists.

You don't need to break encryption to do that. You can make people unencrypt their devices on a case by case basis.

 

[jlc1978]

Ah, the old "strawman comment" tactic to arguing against someone who understands the issue better than yourself.

It's completely relevant. Since you apparently don't understand that what these morons who want to pass this legislation are saying is that Apple and others must keep the keys to access my communications on their system, so that it matters not what I delete or don't delete. There will always be a fingerprint of ALL of my communications in someone's hands outside of my control.

Your asinine argument that my privacy can be protected by just deleting a text or email that's already gone across the wire shows a complete lack of understanding on your part. The parallel would be that a document shredder or incinerator would have to snap and store a picture of every document that I shred or burn before it's destroyed.

The bill relates to being able to decyrpt or unlock phones, so nothing you delete would not be accessible; which is why your argument is irrelevant. The NYC bill, for example, do not require Apple to store or decrypt stored data, only allow access to the phone. Of course, you'd rather rely an an ad hominem than address the issue.

As for third parties being required to reveal private information related to a criminal matter, that is not a new or novel idea under the law.

 

[kensic]

"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?

how about NO!!

anything and everything that exists, no matter how well you protect it. IT WILL BE FOUND!!!!

Cook said, when there's a backdoor, someone will walk through that door. so in your case, those encryption keys will be found/hacked.

Cook's genius engineers always need to be ahead of the hackers at all time. and this is a continuous process, this is a race. Once you take a moment to rest, the Hackers will be ahead and there goes your information.

That's why Cook doesn't want to keep those keys anywhere. if it doesn't exist, no one can find it.


you probably haven't had any REAL personal experiences with being hacked. it is not a fun thing. if this bill gets approved. the chances of hackers getting to your phone is billion times more vs the ZERO time the police is questioning you about human trafficking.
[doublepost=1453505817][/doublepost]

Just an insight into why this guy choose human trafficking for his argument.... it is actually something of a major problem here in the greater Sacramento area.

With that said, I don't care for the proposed law. There is better way to catch crimnals without making everyday citizens out to be criminals.

RIGHT!!, seriously!!! everyday citizens will have the potential chance to be hacked if they approve this bill.

find a better way to catch these criminals!!!!!

 

[leroypants]

Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Leroy?
[doublepost=1453494042][/doublepost]

Apparently it does.

Fact is, being able to freely search someone's property isn't the only way to catch child rapists and pornographers in the act, nor will it allow them to get away scot free if we don't implement it. For one thing, rapists leave tons of physical evidence behind. Pornographers have to devise meeting places to trade their...er...illegal material. All the police have to do is get a potential perp to send them these...er...illegal materials, and they're busted.

You know, basically the same things police have been done long, LONG before smartphones and smartphone encryption became a thing.

Did you know your wife was a prostitute when you married her or did you find out after the wedding?

I guess it has to be pointed out to tin foil hat lunatics that no one is talking about anyone "freely searching" someone's property. People are talking about police who go through due process and obtain warrants, the same warrants they get when the need to search someone's house.

I guess police with warrants should no longer be allowed to search someone's car or their house, or a storage locker since that would be an invasion of your privacy.
[doublepost=1453507272][/doublepost]

how about NO!!

anything and everything that exists, no matter how well you protect it. IT WILL BE FOUND!!!!

Cook said, when there's a backdoor, someone will walk through that door. so in your case, those encryption keys will be found/hacked.

Cook's genius engineers always need to be ahead of the hackers at all time. and this is a continuous process, this is a race. Once you take a moment to rest, the Hackers will be ahead and there goes your information.

That's why Cook doesn't want to keep those keys anywhere. if it doesn't exist, no one can find it.


you probably haven't had any REAL personal experiences with being hacked. it is not a fun thing. if this bill gets approved. the chances of hackers getting to your phone is billion times more vs the ZERO time the police is questioning you about human trafficking.
[doublepost=1453505817][/doublepost]

RIGHT!!, seriously!!! everyday citizens will have the potential chance to be hacked if they approve this bill.

find a better way to catch these criminals!!!!!

How many people were hacked when Apple inserted that backdoor for the NSA a few years ago?