New York's District Attorney: Roll Back Apple's iPhone Encryption (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Mashable: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Thursday that he wants Apple's encryption to go back to how it was in early 2014. Back then, police could basically extract any information they wanted after getting a warrant. "Doing nothing about this problem will perpetuate an untenable arms race between private industry and law enforcement," Vance said on Thursday. "Federal legislation is our only chance to lay these arms aside."

Vance said he's got 423 "lawfully-seized Apple devices" that his employees can't do anything with. Forty-two of those devices "pertain to homicide or attempted murder cases" according to the district attorney's office, and a similar number "relate to sex crimes." The argument, of course, is that the district attorney's office would have an easier time solving crimes if they had access to these phones... Apple believes being forced to hack into phones at the government's will is an unreasonable burden.
ZDNet adds that "the call for federal legislation could be given a popular boost by president elect Donald Trump, who previously called for a boycott on Apple products when it refused to help the FBI."

Comments

Re:What about the rest?

[Kohath]

Following the links we get the real percentages:
- sex crimes: 9%
- homocide: 10%
- assault/robbery/burglary: 14%

Those are the violent crimes. Then
- non-violent property crimes: 36%

And finally police busybodying and misc:
- drug prohibition: 24%
- weapons charge: 5%
- other: 2%

Re:Fat chance o'dat

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a court key which would be like the key to decrypt DVDs and BluRays where no one is supposed to know that except a few people who apparently don't have their own agendas or people they want to spy on for reasons?

You know the best way to keep a secret? Don't tell anyone. Don't let anyone else know. Keep that to yourself and you will never have to worry about that shit ever again.

Those are not telephones

[jabberw0k]

Can we please stop calling these gadgets "telephones" --? Telephones are devices with embedded systems that can handle Telephony and not much else. These so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" are actually locked-down computers for the brainless masses: computers controlled by someone else and not you.

From that perspective, since the user already has no actual control of what their device is actually doing, why would anyone not expect the treachery be relentlessly notched up beyond its already intolerable levels?

Re:All it will take . . .

[I'm New Around Here]

You must be unaware that the current administration is pushing for the these backdoors as well, and the current president is a Democrat. In addition, District Attorney Cyrus Vance is a Democrat, whose father served as Secretary of State for President Carter, and lower offices under Kennedy and Johnson.

You should realize these issues are just from the political party you love to hate.

Re:Fat chance o'dat

[MisterSquid]

You're missing the GP's point.

If your phone can be searched without warrants and without technical encumbrance it's fairly certain that there will be something on it that can be used to implicate you in a crime of some sort.

Federal and municipal law is not only filled with arcana but also with many outdated laws that could be used to convict people who are basically upstanding citizens.

Until 2003, for example, sodomy laws were valid in 14 US states. Another example is that it is illegal to discard mail delivered to you but addressed to someone else, a federal crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

tl;dr: chances are very high that a search of your smartphone could provide incontrovertible evidence that you have violated a crime.