Slashdot Mirror
FBI Chief: Apple, Google Phone Encryption Perilous
An anonymous reader writes The FBI is concerned about moves by Apple and Google to include encryption on smartphones. "I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the contents," FBI Director James Comey told reporters. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law." From the article: "Comey cited child-kidnapping and terrorism cases as two examples of situations where quick access by authorities to information on cellphones can save lives. Comey did not cite specific past cases that would have been more difficult for the FBI to investigate under the new policies, which only involve physical access to a suspect's or victim's phone when the owner is unable or unwilling to unlock it for authorities."
What are you, some kind of godless communist? Next thing I suppose you'll expect is the right of free speech and free assembly. We spent decades fighting the Bolsheviks just to have a bunch of lilly livered liberals whining about human rights and personal liberty? What is this world coming to?
By "forgetting" the key, you're placing yourself beyond the law.
Well no you might be in contempt of court, possibly you could be comitting the crime of obstruction of justice; if others followed your example it could even be inciting riot, yet none of thes would be "beyond the law". Seems likely that the courts will have to figure out where "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," ends and "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," begins, as how can the government force you to assist in gathering evidence for law enforcement.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Worse, it is not even true. Encryption places nobody above the law all it does do is ensure that you are aware of any legal attempt to access your encrypted data because they will need to get a court order to compel you to disclose the decryption key. Before electronic documents they used to have to do this in more or less the same way (get a search warrant for physical documents) so why can't they manage to do the same now?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
All "communist" countries were all about being authoritarian regimes, not about communism. So what is the difference again?
The same as the difference between communism and fascism. (Mussolini and Franco, both facist leaders, fought the Communists tooth and nail in their day.)
The same as the difference between communism and the Taliban. (The Taliban emerged from the fighters that overthrew the Communist regime in Afghanistan.)
The same as the difference between communism and monarchies. (It bears mentioning that one country...Russia...had its monarchies ended by Communism in a bloody civil war.)
The same as the difference between communism and National Socialism (Nazis..who hated communism pretty hard, by the way, and killed 25 million of them).
Saying that someone is the same as a communist because they are authoritarian is as far off the mark as saying two companies are the same because they are direct competitors in the same market. Communism is a subset of authoritarian government forms, not the same set, and it's not at all compatible or even friendly with most of the other forms of government that share its authoritarian characteristic. I know it feels good to throw words around that make someone sound bad, but really...if you want to be a truly active and useful participant in a democracy, you have to pull your head out of your ass and deal in terms of fucking reality.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The first link the person posted is what I copied the quote from. All 4 articles are fine examples of the continuance of COINTELPRO, and pure propaganda (not that I expect better from the commonly complicit Washington Post). In the first article GP linked, I counted 3 blatant lies in the first paragraphs, and several intentionally misleading statements.
First paragraph
1. Apple created the encryption to thwart legal warrants.
LIE, Apples encryption was intended to protect consumers, not thwart law enforcement.
2. Under the new operating system, however, Apple has devised a way to defeat lawful search warrants.
LIE, Apples encryption does not defeat warrants. Apples encryption removes them as a middle man, but does not defeat the exercise of a warrant in any way shape or form.
3. “Unlike our competitors,” Apple’s new privacy policy boasts, “Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data.”
LIE, Apple is not the only company developing and advertising user controlled encryption.
M-1. Warrants will go nowhere, as “it’s not technically feasible for [Apple] to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”
Misleading. As stated above Apple removes itself as a middle man but does not make execution of warrants impossible.
M-2. Anyone with any iPhone can download the new warrant-thwarting operating system for free, and it comes automatically with the new iPhone 6.
Misleading. Anyone with a supported Apple device can download and install any upgrade. Apple adding encryption did not change a well established practice.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.