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New York DA Wants Apple, Google To Roll Back Encryption (tomsguide.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. called on Apple and Google to weaken their device encryption, arguing that thousands of crimes remained unsolved because no one can crack into the perpetrators' phones. Vance, speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security here, said that law enforcement officials did not need an encryption "backdoor," sidestepping a concern of computer-security experts and device makers alike. Instead, Vance said, he only wanted the encryption standards rolled back to the point where the companies themselves can decrypt devices, but police cannot. This situation existed until September 2014, when Apple pushed out iOS 8, which Apple itself cannot decrypt. "Tim Cook was absolutely right when he told his shareholders that the iPhone changed the world," Vance said. "It's changed my world. It's letting criminals conduct their business with the knowledge we can't listen to them."
You shouldn't be able to listen to them... you shouldn't be able to listen to anyone. Try doing your job the old fashioned way... outsmart them.. stop trying to take short cuts at the expensive our our rights and liberties...
But hey.. that's just my opinion
--Hired Net Grunt
Many law enforcement leaders are acting as if no crimes can be solved unless all cell phones are made more vulnerable.
What a great idea.... weaken everyone for a few rare cases.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
If anyone other than the intended recipient can decrypt (including Apple), then everyone can. Apple having a back door into your stuff is a back door, even if the police don't have access to it. Unfortunately, the DA is going to sound very reasonable to anyone who doesn't understand encryption.
You can absolutely listen to their conversations and see their text messages. All you need is to convience a Judge to approve a wiretap order and the Carriers will let you spy to your hearts content. Stop asking companies to provide back-doors to my personal devices that I don't not wish to grant you access to
Glad to hear he thinks we don't need privacy.
Now I have a long list of police files and videos I would like to see.
Wait, you mean you don't want us to see those? But thousands of accusations against police are going unsolved without access to them!
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
We live in such a complex web of laws now that we are all breaking them every day... so if the government can on demand browse through your phone they WILL find evidence of some crime. Especially Slashdot readers I'd warrant.
So basically what the government wants is an easy way to harass or lock-up anyone it deems a nuisance for any reason,
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One problem time and again is that crypto only works for "the good guys" (which may or may not include LEOs, this is not automatic) if it isn't diddled, and therefore it also works for "the bad guys", whoever those might be. This is well-known in "intelligence"-land, but the concepts that are well-known and -understood there, quite certainly aren't in, oh, LEO land. Or the land of the liars, er, politicians. Or much anywhere else, really. Something that will have to change, thanks to information technology and world-wide networks.
Another problem is that the LEOs are now the tail wagging the dog. Maybe they should re-read the Peelian principles, instead of fancying themselves the militarised "command and control" hub of society.
Otherwise you have a full-blown Police State and that is far, far worse than almost any amount of unsolved crime. In a free state, the police must be severely limited in what it can do and must be kept at a level of power that allows them to reliably keep society functioning, but never above.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
thousands of crimes remained unsolved because no one can crack into the perpetrators' phones
is exaggerated speculation at best. There may well be thousands of crimes that include locked phones in their set of evidence, but there is no guarantee that data on those locked phones would lead to the crime being solved if it were unlocked. It's also possible that many of those crimes could be / will be solved eventually using other pieces of evidence and investigative avenues.
Earn your pay instead of putting innocent citizens in danger.
People have a right to secure communications.
Deal with it bullies...
The DA provides the best argument for Apple to strengthen encryption, by his own existence and statement. Imagine 10,000 district attorneys across the US, each of which have varying competence / incompetence in handling investigations, requests from Apple certain encryption/decryption keys, and wildly varying levels of knowledge about how to use or judge when to ask for this capability.
And, for that matter, wildly differing capabilities to securely handle and keep private the information they find on people's phones.
No thank you, and Apple is right to refuse them.
Its crazy how lazy these people have become. Its way to much trouble for them to actually do their job. They just want to be able to cheat and skip to the end.