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Prosecutors Op-Ed: Phone Encryption Blocks Justice
New submitter DaDaDaaaaa writes: The New York Times features a joint op-ed piece by prosecutors from Manhattan, Paris, London and Spain, in which they decry the default use by Apple and Google of full disk encryption in their latest smartphone OSes (iOS 8 and Android Lollipop, respectively). They talk about the murder scene of a father of six, where an iPhone 6 and a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge were found.
"An Illinois state judge issued a warrant ordering Apple and Google to unlock the phones and share with authorities any data therein that could potentially solve the murder. Apple and Google replied, in essence, that they could not — because they did not know the user's passcode. The homicide remains unsolved. The killer remains at large."
They make a case for lawmakers to force Apple and Google to include backdoors into their smartphone operating systems. One has to wonder about the legitimate uses of full disk encryption, which can protect good people from harm, and them from having their privacy needlessly intruded upon.
"An Illinois state judge issued a warrant ordering Apple and Google to unlock the phones and share with authorities any data therein that could potentially solve the murder. Apple and Google replied, in essence, that they could not — because they did not know the user's passcode. The homicide remains unsolved. The killer remains at large."
They make a case for lawmakers to force Apple and Google to include backdoors into their smartphone operating systems. One has to wonder about the legitimate uses of full disk encryption, which can protect good people from harm, and them from having their privacy needlessly intruded upon.
That if they knew what was on the phone they'd be able to nab the murderer.
You can leave a trail of blood all the way back to your Rockingham estate, and still get away with it.
There's significant (and mixed) legal precedent regarding someone being ordered to give a password that will decrypt data that will incriminate them. If the courts would not be entitled to this password from the phone's owner (due to Fifth amendment protections) then it's not quite just to claim they have a right to it prior to his/her capture.
This article seemed like a balanced view on the subject:
http://politicsandpolicy.org/a...
Phones are used to communicate. How about identifying the carrier, going to the carrier with a subpoena for the ownership information and communications logs, and go from there?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There is no proof there is any evidence on the phones.
HOWEVER, there is a ton of evidence that authorities will abuse their legal authority and spy on innocent people.
Whats next, getting rid of trials because the law knows that some guilty people have been found innocent, and the few innocent who have been found guilt are just collateral damage.
I find it hard to believe that invasive access to a smart phone is the only way to solve a crime, murder 1 or otherwise.
Lots of things "hinder" justice. The fact that we don't all wear trackers that inform the government of where we are at all times hinders justice. The fact that all financial transactions aren't conducted electronically hinders justice. The fact I can go wherever I want without first obtaining permission from the government hinders justice.
The fact that I don't have to submit to those intrusions is part of my freedom. I appreciate my freedom and am willing to forgo or more efficient justice system in order to maintain my freedom - especially given the fact that once freedom is sufficiently curtailed those doing the curtailing tend to lose their concern for justice.
Wow, just imagine a world in which police are able to solve murder cases. Truly, this is an idea who's time has come. It will change the world! No longer will police simply be relegated to issuing parting and speeding tickets. /s
As TWX states above, they can go to the carrier and get call/location/sms logs. Do they think that the killer left them a video note on the phone?
I think I might have some small sympathy for the idea that law enforcement should have some recourse to access the contents of a cell phone, provided they first get a warrant. However, in light of what we've learned about the NSA spying, I don't see how anyone could trust that such a back door won't be abused. Really, building any kind of backdoor is a serious security risk, since any backdoor that the "good guys" can use also carries a risk that the "bad guys" will discover it. But beyond all the normal security risks, we now know that our this kind of access has been abused by various forms of law enforcement in ways that are ethically questionable if not illegal.
So... sorry. You no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt. If you wanted our good faith, you shouldn't have secretly abused the system.
Encryption, in and of itself, is for everyone. The government is neither entitled to better encryption than Joe Sixpack, nor is the government entitled to backdoors that can be used by criminals to break in as soon as they're known...which, given the black-hat hacker community, won't take very long.
If the government *gets a warrant*, they can coerce the owner of the phone to unlock it for use as evidence. As it is, "stingrays" and NSA taps on our communications allow the government to intercept private communications *without* a warrant.
If we're not allowed to encrypt our phones, tablets, and hard drives because it makes it harder for law enforcement, then pretty soon it will be illegal to own front doors that can't be knocked down with a LEO battering ram, or locks that can't be opened by LEO at the push of a button...and criminals will soon have the button (hackers have already broken the security of garage door openers, wireless car starters, and hacked into car control systems; I suppose you say that we can't put better encryption on *those* because of LEO?)
We need to curtail the government's intrusion, not make it bigger. 9/11 started a dangerous trend of fighting terrorism by shackling law-abiding citizens, bit by bit.
Security and privacy are opposites. The more we have of one, the less we have of the other. Any mother tempted to look inside their teenager's diary knows this.
The question is not and never has been, could we obtain more security by giving up some privacy.
Instead the question is, what issues are so substantial that an invasion of privacy is required - and how large an invasion would that be.
The proposed invasion of privacy - a back door in every single phones - where like it or not, people keep nude photos, sexy text messages, GPS data, contact information, etc. etc. is HUGE. The proposed security enhancement is minor.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Around the world, tech company executives rub their hands in glee at the thought of all the profits coming there way after the US government destroy any remaining trust in the US industry.
public: prosecutorial overreach contributed to the death of Aaron Schwartz
proescutors: yeah,but he was a ruthless hacker.
public it has built an unsustainable prison population, ensures perpetual incarceration, and disproportionately targets minorities and poor people.
prosecutors: these people had the drugs, so were technically fighting a war on the drugs. mission success.
public The average american breaks 3 laws per day, and if youre incapable of bail or restitution youre sent to prison for your debt. the united states leads the world in total citizens incarcerated.
prosecutors:If you cant do the time, dont do the crime.
Google: hey guise we heard u like privacy...
Apple: ditto. iPrivacy. it werks.
Prosecutors: phone encryption makes my job hard. turn it off.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Even if he had proof that the murderer would be caught if they got into the phone, it wouldn't change anything. We could also prove that the murderer would be caught if every human was issued a body-cam and the penalty for not maintaining it properly was death. Just because something catches murderers doesn't mean it should be done.
"An Illinois state judge issued a warrant ordering Apple and Google to unlock the phones and share with authorities any data therein that could potentially solve the murder. Apple and Google replied, in essence, that they could not — because they did not know the user's passcode. The homicide remains unsolved. The killer remains at large."
They could probably solve even more cases if they had the ability to remotely decrypt and access the contents of everyone's cell phone. They could solve *even more* cases if they were able to search anyone's property without a warrant.
What if we just put everyone in prison. It'll be pretty hard for anyone to commit crimes from inside a jail cell.
I suppose it's easy for some people to fall into the mindset that crime prevention is the *only* thing that matters.
Blame Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. DUI checkpoints absolutely violate the 4th and the dissenting opinions state as much, yet they're allowed. In my own state, the court had decided against them until years later, they decided to allow them. They all but admit that they violate our rights but because it's safety, they let it slide. If laws mean nothing to the courts, then it's up to the citizenry to defend themselves against a lawless government.
We'll do that. Once you install a door into your home that has no more than a simple tumbler lock with police having the key to it and you having no provision whatsoever to monitor when this door opens. Also any and all security systems you might have have to turn off as soon as this door is opened. The police may of course only use that key with a warrant. No worries about this.
Once you've done that, we can talk. And if you say "hey, that's stupid, anyone with a hint of a burglary skill could break the lock and my home would be wide open". Yeaaaaaaah, you got it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All my computers and smartphones have full disk encryption enabled. I don't want thieves to have the ability to play with my data. How is that not a perfectly legitimate use? I travel frequently and if my phone or laptop was stolen, without encryption, a thief could extract all the data, steal my identity and make my life a living hell. Also currently in Canada when you cross the border you can have your devices confiscated. If the agents want to inspect them and are unable to they will then be sent to Ottawa, where the border services will attempt to forensically extract data from the drive to look for "evidence". When you're at the border your protections against unreasonable searches are no more. Suppose I go to a tropical country and the border agents want to inspect the devices of every single man who comes back out to look for evidence allowing them to catch pedophiles who engaged in child sexual tourism. They will not find anything about you, but they will surely find some material somewhere that could be constructed as damaging. Or suppose you visited 4chan and on it where was a lolicon avatar that was loaded without your knowledge and it is still in your browser cache, it could be potentially illegal in your legislature. There are many ways where this can backfire against you. This is why I fully encrypt and wipe my devices before crossing the border and I advise everyone to do the same. We have so little privacy in this world, you can bet I will use encryption to protect my private life from prying eyes. These prosecutors can plead and gesticule all they want, however the genie is not getting back into the bottle.
GPS location based on cell towers, actual sms messages, phone calls to and from the phone and probably a bunch of other stuff that the cellco is only too happy to provide. I'm sorry if the police can't do their job without accessing the users actual private data (such as game scores and alternate non-cell tower gps, and iMessages and app data) but there's nothing to suggest that the encrypted data would hold anything useful. not every murder is a Robert Ludlum plot.
Freedom always comes with risks and one is some degree of unsolved crime. That is fine, a free society can withstand some crime being unsolved. On the other hand, a non-free society is about the worst form of human existence, and countless people have risked and given their lives to help establish free societies. It is really a very small evil (some unsolved crime) against an extremely large evil. And preventing people from using secure encryption is a huge step towards the large evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Or you can be more tactful, playing the polite devil's advocate, and act like you genuinely believe they have the best of intentions, and then proceed to show them how even with entirely altruistic ideals what they would want with respect to encryption is actually entirely counterproductive to the long term protection of society.
For example, take the following argument:
Simply put, if the government can read everyone's encrypted data, however trustworthy they might claim to be, then so might somebody else who might not be as benign. They may be doing so in violation of the law, of course, and in an ideal world would eventually get caught and made to pay for such crimes, but in the interim, they can still harm completely innocent people, and the damage that they may be able to cause before they are brought to justice can sometimes not be entirely reparable by the judicial measures that could be taken. Further, even the most effectively run law enforcement system cannot be absolutely everywhere at all times, so it is all but inevitable that some people will even get away with committing crimes of such nature The net result, inevitably, is far more harm to the public than what law enforcement can realistically prevent with access to such keys.
One would not be able to rationally dispute the point that there is a lot of good potential that could come from law enforcement being able to get access to any device, in circumstances where they justly deserve to do so, but it is inescapable that the impact that implementing such measures would have on our lives today, in the reality of the world of the world in which we actually live, would amount to a much greater amount of harm, and as such cannot possibly be seen as worthwhile. The harm that could befall the general public if (and more than likely when) such keys fell into the wrong hands is simply far too great to allow even the most trustworthy of individuals or committees to have unfettered access to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'