Slashdot Mirror
FBI Couldn't Access Nearly 7,000 Devices Because of Encryption (foxbusiness.com)
Michael Balsamo, writing for Associated Press: The FBI hasn't been able to retrieve data from more than half of the mobile devices it tried to access in less than a year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Sunday, turning up the heat on a debate between technology companies and law enforcement officials trying to recover encrypted communications. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, federal agents were unable to access the content of more than 6,900 mobile devices, Wray said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia. "To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," Wray said. "It impacts investigations across the board -- narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation." The FBI and other law enforcement officials have long complained about being unable to unlock and recover evidence from cellphones and other devices seized from suspects even if they have a warrant, while technology companies have insisted they must protect customers' digital privacy.
apples new face unlock will make it easy!
Or, they're saying that they can't access these devices to lull criminals into a false sense of complacency.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Encryption works as designed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
On how many of those devices did they have a warrant to even try to access them?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The FBI can't beat confessions out of thousands and thousands of suspects, making it harder to get convictions from criminals hiding critical evidence in their encrypted (non-cleartext) brains.
Sorry, but some sacrifices are needed to keep democracies from becoming police states. Especially when it is always the police asking for more an more power over citizens they are supposed to protect.
Does anyone have a list of devices the FBI can't decrypt? I'd like to make sure my next phone is one on the list, but I'm not sure which Android devices pass that test.
Basically they got greedy. They wanted dragnet-like capabilities, and they were like "well fuck these civilians". They went too far, and now found out about that Dutch saying that says: "trust arrives walking, and departs on horseback".
And now nobody trusts these three letter agencies anymore. And now they're whining like toddlers, saying "this is a huge, huge problem" when in fact they created the problem themselves.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Think of the children!
Meanwhile Jeff Epstein's island continues to operate.
The FBI has lost all credibility.
I wonder how the FBI scored prosecutions before mobile devices were invented? I guess they must not have solved any crimes at all?
The problem is that there is not a way that would allow for the encryption to actually protect the user's data at the same time as give law enforcement access. Take, for example, the physical master key. A landlord might have a single key that opens every lock for the complex in which he or she administers. The individuals living may feel protected since their keys only open each of their doors. A thief would only need wait until the land lord was complacent to steal the master key and then have access to entire complex. The same problem works in the virtual world with encryption. Even if there is not a malicious 3rd party involved, who watches the watchers? Let us say, in a near perfect world, that 99% of law enforcement is honest, there would still be that 1% that is dishonest. Even in the case of 100% being honest, many can name to where the road of good intentions will lead us; good actors having limited scope do no necessarily have good results.
I understand the need for law enforcement, but I also understand the need for personal privacy and sanctity of one's personal property (home, things, so on).
I understand if I drop a cigarette or cigar butt or even a soda cap that it might have my DNA or fingerprints on it. I know that my cell phone might radiate identifying information about me.
My point is this:
The line between what the government can legally pry into and what requires a search warrant has always been and will forever be "blurry" in the USA.
I would rather the laws err on being more cautious and protective of people's rights rather than making everyone's life an open book for law enforcement.
Ok. Some /. snark is going to come along and say, "Think about the children?" or the "Think about those slave of human-trafficing".
Yeah, I get that and all, but would you rather be considered "guilty before being proven innocent"? Seriously think about that. Thrown into jail without a phone call or chance to contact anyone outside to fight on your behalf. In some countries that is called "disappearing people" and those people are never seen or heard from again. Do you really want that fate hanging over your head for the slightest infraction? It can't get that serious you say? Think again, history has proven to all of us that human beings can be exceptionally cruel and uncaring towards other human beings.
So you snark and say on /. "Well I am not a human being." Ok. In that case you would not mind if someone squeezed off a few clips at you and killed you? It would probably be legal to do so if you can claim and prove you are not a human being.
All I want anyone in the USA to really really carefully consider is this:
Be very very careful of the rights that you give up to your government because you might not get them back for a long long time, if ever. And then if you do get any rights back, it may only happen after major revolutions within the country that tear it apart and leave it on "the slag heap of history".
And then where are you and your rights??
The agents who struggled to prosecute teenagers for ripping off the telco 20 and 30 years ago are now considered some of the senior "cyber" experts. Somewhere at the FBI there is a crotchty old fucker who still tries to use his checkbook at the grocery store and he's sending out weekly paper memos urging his underlings to finally figure out what to do about these encripdon scramblers. "We defeated screen saver passwords we can defeat this too!"
It's going to take a die-off to un-fuck this situation.
In the meantime this idiot's crying and attention whory attempts at public lobbying by proxy is alerting even relatively unsophisticated criminals that somehow this encryption stuff is pretty hard for law enforcement to crack.
To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem,"
Hey, FBI?
No, it isn't, but do you remember this? The absolutely massive violations of the 4th amendment by the USGov? THAT is a "huge, huge problem". The intrusion into the personal life of billions of ordinary, peaceful, law abiding citizens around the world (not just in the USofA). No-warrant, mass surveillance, like we used to blame the USSR and GDR for.
You violated the spirit and the letter of the law on such a scale that the world pushed back. You were given our trust, and you violated it. Not just here and there, exceptionally. No, you violated it systemically and constantly, for decades. And you are still doing so. No one who violated those laws has seen their day in court, a single day in prison, a single dollar of fine. You turned yourselves into a surveillance state.
So yes, we are pushing back and we will KEEP pushing back, harder than ever. We will reclaim the rights you stole from us, with or without your permission. Because that's how things work in a free society - something you wouldn't understand.
Sincerely,
The rest of us who aren't tyrannical fucks.
So, 20 years ago when smart phones didnâ(TM)t exist, was it a huge problem then? Because, if not, it canâ(TM)t be a huge problem now.
Do you have ESP?
We have a president who is a full blown lunatic and she has a staff filled with criminals.
Hillary lost the election.
*points finger* Ha ha!
Oh, darn, I disabled FaceUnlock for my iPhone. How could that have happened?
Easy solution: stop spying on Americans.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They are not going to be able to grab someone's device and lock up the case on them...sorry. Just not a problem that someone can solve for them. They are going to have to do real police work to bust people.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
My heart bleeds for them.
FBI confirmed for whiny crybabies who want to be spoonfed everything instead of doing the jobs they were hired to do.
Let's face the facts. There can only be two choices when it comes to encryption: Ban ALL encryption for consumer devices (which would be a gigantic leap backwards and create a massive security issue for everyone) or leave encryption alone. Compromising encryption algorithms IS A NON-STARTER.
Of course if they banned encrytion, then of course the rich, and politicians would still manage to have it, as would EVERY SINGLE CRIMINAL AND TERRORIST with the means and wherewithal to find and use it, so banning encryption is also a NON-STARTER. The Djinn is already out of the bottle, we do not have time travel machines, you can't go back in time and prevent encryption from being invented, fucking DEAL WITH IT, LAW ENFORCEMENT!
Do you use bold and all-caps because you only want me to read those bits, or is it because you want me to read those bits more intensely than the non-bold-or-all-caps bits?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If encryption was lessened to where law enforcement can get in I wonder how many phones, including those of law enforcement agencies, will be compromised by those with malicious intent who figured out how to get in, either by hacks / mods / social engineering? Sounds like that would be a big problem as well. I hope they are as willing to pursue all of the cases where phones were decrypted by non-law enforcement and information is stolen from phone users. oops I hope I don't believe that.
This --> &
is the world's smallest violin. And it's playing just for you.
Have gnu, will travel.
If I were the FBI, I'd keep the actual cell phone of a suspect, but give them back an identical looking cell phone. It wouldn't have their original data on it, but instead a key logger, which would keylog the password once the phone is booted up and then send it on to FBI HQ.
People have a right to privacy and encryption is important to allow them to retain that right. I don't agree though that any law against it would be ineffective. For a start encryption would disappear from most consumer products and the encryption that remained would eventually be easier to detect. I think that, were it outlawed, the total amount of crypto would reduce.
Anyone caught using crypto illegally (whether is can be unencrypted or not) would stand to be be arrested and stopped from committing crime on that basis, at least it gives them one more charge to face, after all prison is prison no matter what got you there (ask Al Capone).
The rich being above the law might be a more difficult issue, it would depend on the penalties for getting caught, 1% of net worth would be quite a sting, as would adding 50% to the jail sentence of any other crime being committed.
So no, crypto should not be outlawed, but yes, if it were banned the ban could be effective, what's with all you people saying laws don't work ?
Nullius in verba
federal agents were unable to access the content of more than 6,900 mobile devices, Wray said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia. "To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem,"
And to the extent that we care about the Constitution, we want to keep it that way. Don't forget, these police associations are the primary lobbyists for that police right to steal from citizens.
I wonder what it is like when the director of the NSA and the FBI get together. Does the director of the FBI just lay into the director of the NSA for creating this "problem" or does he just give him the evil eye.
If the FBI succeeds in making the device manufacturers provide back doors to encryption, it will take exactly 0 seconds for 3rd party apps that encrypt securely to take its place.
There's a handful of law enforcement people who want backdoors. Everyone else says no. You need a few more participants on the other side before it qualifies as a 'debate'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You're right. I usually traffic my drugghumans with pickup trucks.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
There are many other messages that remain inaccessible historically.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
LOL, WUT?
That's the wrong attitude entirely. You're telling people with access to secret courts, gag orders, and virtually unlimited funding to 'deal with it'. They also happen to either write the laws, or have untoward influence over those who do.
They'll deal with it, but I don't think you'll like the eventual outcome.
Posting angry sounding rubbish on Slashdot doesn't change the fact that in the end, it's not a fight consumers can win. It's a lot like the gun control debate -- the exact same rationale gets trotted out:
"yes, most people can responsibly own guns, but we need a way to protect innocents from those who can't" (if i were a betting man, i'd wager this will be used to push self driving cars in the very near future)
Eventually the side pushing for a decrease in personal responsibility will win. It's a long slow decline in freedom and autonomy, based upon an appeal for 'safety'.
Can someone please tell me what could possibly be on these phones that they can't get to? They already have all the calls & likely texts from the carrier (with a warrant, right?). They think there are some pictures of a terrorist holding his AK or something? I just really don't understand the need.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I'll try:
Maybe because they haven't committed any crimes or maybe because they haven't been convicted of any crimes or maybe because this is still a country that doesn't imprison those that are no longer in power.
I just don't understand. They continue to say things like this, appearing to be in complete denial of reality. Why is this? Encryption is out there. It's not going away, and there is no going back to the way they used to operate. They need to accept this. I believe 100% that companies who have the ability to provide/decrypt customer data with a court order should be required to do so. This should increase safety for all of us, as software continues to be written that ensures it is in fact impossible for those companies to access our data, as it should be. In many cases, this means criminals are going to get away with crimes. It's unfortunate, but this is the price we pa for privacy. The tools are available to everyone. There is simply no excuse for this level of ignorance in the law enforcement community, let alone among politicians.
Every time I hear about law enforcement wanting anything to do with mobile phones it reminds me how much they put into recovering stolen devices in the first place.... exactly zero.
Priorities right?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
These people are *REMEMBERING* details of their criminal activity but we can't read their minds! Now that we have a machine that can interpret what people are thinking- you are pro crime unless you allow us to read everyone's minds.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
> Let's face the facts. There can only be two choices when it comes to encryption: Ban ALL encryption for consumer devices ... or leave encryption alone. Compromising encryption algorithms IS A NON-STARTER.
Non techies don't think this way though. They are forever convinced that they can do this, or that they can claim they aren't doing this while actually doing this. The belief in backdoored encryption seems pervasive, because we have people clamoring for it constantly.
When the govenrment is working for the people to strengthen the products they use, the people are more willing to go along with its recommendations. And to trust it when it says it needs a backdoor and will only use it with a warrant in cases of criminal or national security importance.
But the last two decades has seen multiple revelations that the government is working against the people - violating the 4th Amendment under the veil of secrecy. When the public gets a whiff of that, they start to distrust the government. Not only do they refuse to put in backdoors, they start implementing security measures that even they cannot bypass if they lose the key. "Just to be on the safe side."
The U.S. government has nobody to blame but themselves for letting things to get to this point. Once you lose the people's trust, the people stop going out of their way to make things easier for the government, and in fact will start doing things to make things harder for the government.
Incidentally, that was a PR snowjob by Apple. The cell phone in that case didn't belong to the terrorists. It actually belonged to the San Bernardino County government. It was assigned to one of the terrorists as a work phone. Apple was basically arguing that they should not be compelled to give the owner of a phone access to information on the phone in the case of a (potential) dire emergency. If you follow through on their argument, employers would not have access to company phones they provided to employees, parents would not have access to phones they bought for their kids, you could not authorize police to pull GPS data from a phone you lent to a friend when they went hiking and got lost. It's an argument which weakens the concept of ownership (right of the owner to know what their property is being used for, vs the user's right to privacy).
"Do you use bold and all-caps because you only want me to read those bits, or is it because you want me to read those bits more intensely than the non-bold-or-all-caps bits?"
Don't be so harsh. The kid went to a HTML-course yesterday.
You are more of a threat to a free, democratic society than terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers and their ilk have ever been.
Here is a cock. Suck it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
""To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," Wray said. "It impacts investigations across the board -- narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation, political coverups, wait, did I say that last part out loud?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Face ID can't be tricked by showing it an image, not even a 3D image, because it doesn't work using optical imaging.
> Apple was basically arguing that they should not be compelled to give the owner of a phone access to information on the phone in the case of a (potential) dire emergency.
Apple had several arguments, the most powerful of which was that the government had not proven that Apple was the only party which had sufficient expertise to crack the phone--the law only gives the government authority to force a company to aid in this type of situation when there's no reasonable alternative.
But if it makes you feel better about yourself to concoct some sort of anti-Apple fiction, then please do. Maybe you won't need to kick a puppy on the way home then.
Stuff's hard sometimes and I don't like it. Please fix.
Give them this and in 10 years they'll be whining about how unfair it is that they need a warrant to read your mind.
You laugh, but this has been tried.
In the case cited, fMRI scans were used to determine whether the plaintiff's "intent". IOW, they were using the scans to determine whether the doctor has "intent" to defraud the insurance agencies.
Cellebrite isn't infallible.
This is a good thing! I am against government incursion into private affairs. The fact that the FBI is whining like a child whom nobody will share their toys with is a win for freedom!
Okay, this is an argument I haven't considered. I think what most people mean by "won't work" is that with the existing tools and suggested methods, there would be nothing stopping someone who wished to use cryptographically secure tools on top of, or beyond the consumer level system. (See http://www.phantomcode.com/com...)
What you suggest is that we would mandate all encryption without government access illegal. Banks and large corporations would get a registration for their crypto/certificates and then just add software to their servers to log/transmit the unencrypted data at government requirement. Other encryption, like iPhone system level encryption, could still be legal (see http://www.phantomcode.com/com...) with access available to government requirement and, otherwise, with no discernible change to the security to the average voter.
Then the government could snoop on streams of data and servers and have just cause to arrest anyone using encryption that isn't authorized and accessible. The result would be that most data streams would be monitored by programs essentially looking for data streams that aren't authorized. It'd be tricky to kill off all the non-US certificates, but a MITM with certs issued by someone like Symantec or Google could do effectively the same thing.
I think this is the ultimate goal of the great firewall of China. They haven't been successful. Yet. I'm not confident they won't be mostly successful in the long run though. I'm not confident the US won't get to the same place eventually.
No. The huge huge problem is the FBI trying to get data from over 14,000 phones a year.
Explain to me why Bush and Cheney aren't in jail? They're outright war criminals by both the letter and intent of the Geneva Conventions.
And the result is, the FBI couldn't access half the smartphones they wanted to last year.
Nor could they access any of the guns they failed to find last year. Or read any of the documents shredded and burned. Or transcribe any of the phone calls they failed to tap and/or record. Or, for that matter, understand any of the dead languages they could not translate, or drink any of the coffees they failed to pour.
Apparently they need to seek out evidence, via, you know, police work. I feel so sorry for them, being forced to do the jobs they were trained to do. None of that justifies backdoors into secure devices.
...what the FBI want us to think.
Probably the biggest problem with this idea is that most people won't have anything to hide and the FBI would find nothing of value for that effort, and those who were even slightly serious about hiding stuff would immediately toss the device that had been out of their control in the trash, and the FBI would again get nothing and would lose a device.
I think dumpster diving is part of their job description.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
From the agency that utilizes parallel construction. Any law abiding citizen should rightfully wish to encrypt as much as their data as possible to give themselves at least some small measure of protection from these agencies, who demonstrate utter contempt for both the spirit and the letter of the very law they are tasked to enforce.
Next up, steel reinforced front doors should be outlawed, because it interferes with early-am no-knock armed raids on people suspected of jay walking.
If the CIA can't keep their secrets (think Edward Snowden) then why should we trust them with ours? The more people who have access to a secret, the more likely it will leak.
Encryption existed long before the US Constitution or the Fourth Amendment were written. By today's standards, that encryption was pathetic. But back then, it was a significant obstacle to law enforcement. The founders knew this when they wrote the Fourth Amendment so did the states when they ratified it.
The founders included the Fourth Amendment because they had already witnessed the abuses of surveillance by the British government. They were trying to limit similar abuses by the government they were forming.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
They never got Appleâ(TM)s help. Kinda blows your little theory up, doesnâ(TM)t it?
An iPhone is a digital safe. Safe companies are well within their rights to make a safe without backdoorsâ"and thatâ(TM)s what Apple is trying to do.
Occasionally the government has a good reason to crack a safe, but the law is such that the safe company only has to help if thereâ(TM)s no other reasonable option.
Thatâ(TM)s why Apple won.
Decrypting the info on suspects' phones isn't necessary in most cases:
- Most organised criminals use simple burner phones that don't have encryption.
- The FBI has access to everyone's automatic backups on the "cloud."
- The FBI has access to phone metadata which tells them everything about the phones' locations, movements, times, who they called, etc. They use social network analysis software to construct elaborate and detailed maps of people's activities through from their phones' metadata. If anyone's dumb enough to use their phone during or for criminal activities, the FBI can easily identify and catch them.
It seems like there's an ulterior motive behind this constant pressure to ban or weaken encryption for citizens. Either that or the FBI are plain incompetent and want to blame/scapegoat something.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
If I were the FBI, I'd keep the actual cell phone of a suspect, but give them back an identical looking cell phone. ...
Sounds like a good reason to keep my iPod with it's distinctive cracks on the screen and dent in the back. Good luck trying to pass off a different device as mine, or recreating the crack pattern close enough that I wouldn't notice the difference. This makes me wonder if there isn't a way to mark a device in a way that makes it easy to tell it's yours and yet difficult to replicate. I mean other than cracking the screen. Could someone pull the screen from my iPod, place it on another, and give me that to me and log the inputs to catch my passcode? I doubt it.
What of multiple passcodes? One code unlocks the phone as usual. Another displays an image that the owner picked out, so that one could punch in that code and not unlock it but would verify it's the same phone. A third one that erases the phone. Is there a something else someone might want?
If the owner of the phone plays like nothing is wrong on unlocking it with a kill code then the FBI may be destroying evidence, not the owner, by entering it on the original device. Certainly the FBI won't fall for that? If they do then they might just destroy the evidence that they were looking for. Create a back up of the device first? Sure, but now the person is wise that someone tried switching devices and will never enter the right code on anything.
If the FBI can impose a requirement that every phone maker must use an encryption they they have keys for then people can just install an app that uses it's own encryption. If there is a mandate that such encryption not be published on walled garden software sites like the Apple and Google stores then people will jail break their phones to install what they want. Maybe the FBI then mandates that the phones not be capable of being jail broken. Well, Apple and the cell phone service providers have been trying that for a long time, good luck with that. Assuming they are successful then people will buy secure phones on a black market, or develop non-phone devices for their secure data. Whatever law the FBI will want passed to allow themselves to access private data on electronic devices there will be some other technique to get around it. It doesn't even take electronics to create an encrypted document. People have been doing ciphers with pen and paper for a long time.
This is simply not a war that the FBI can win.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Proper encryption is indistinguishable from random noise. You are basically arguing in favor of "guilty until proven innocent", or rather you are arguing for "guilty period" because it would be impossible for me to prove that "jklhdsnvgndsrihgvsnsiertysirhdntsrdihgrdhig" is just a random string and is not some super secret encrypted message.
That's right. If I take random noise, perhaps point an antenna at the sun and record the RF from it, then send a copy of it to the people I need to communicate with, then we can use this noise as a one-time-pad for any communications between us. The means to use this one time pad doesn't need to be a digital file either. I can use that noise and overlay it on my voice and then play the audio on a radio transmission on a loop. The powers that be might get wise on me transmitting a code but it'd be hard to prove it wasn't just me putting in an erased tape into a player on accident or something equally innocent. I might get a reprimand, perhaps even punished severely, but the message will remain secure if the original pad recording was destroyed.
The English language is flexible enough that people speak in a kind of code all the time. This is a common trope in storytelling. Someone might be known to say something is "just peachy" when things are going bad. This person gets in trouble with the big bad in the story and will have to play like everything is all right if a familiar person comes to the door, calls on the phone, or whatever. The person under threat says everything is "just peachy" and the other person knows something is up, plays along, goes away, and comes back later with reinforcements. That's the simplest of codes, more complex ones can be used to give more detail.
There's real life examples of this with things like people blinking out Morse code, using subtle hand gestures, as well as creative usage of the English language. I took some courses on computer security and encryption and there are many ways to hide, obfuscate, and otherwise transmit data in a way that is impossible to distinguish from noise.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
good.
Encryption works, don't try and change that. The arrest and investigation must already have a basis, so just change the law and say, we assume there is evidence on said device which implicates you to X, Y & Z. For those that have nothing to hide, it has no effect. Those that do have a choice, go to jail basis on an assumption or reveal the data and get prosecuted accordingly.
...and watch all large US businesses register offshore/abroad so they can continue doing business
this is an exercise in how to tank your economy
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Some 240 million people should give up encryption because of 6,900? The entire nations devices become more at risk because of 0.002875% of the population?
Not surprising to see the director planting these seeds of bullshit so early in his career. That must have been some rigorous lapdog training he went through.
Your sig here!
How did they solve crimes 10 years ago when people didn't have smart phones? What evidence was available then that isn't available now?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If only there was a responsible trustworthy agency which could handle this like NOTHING THE US GOVERNMENT TOUCHES!
The FBI has only themselves to blame for this. Fuck them.
Congress cannot pass a law protecting civil rights including the 4th amendment which they cannot break.
So no, crypto should not be outlawed, but yes, if it were banned the ban could be effective, what's with all you people saying laws don't work ?
When this subject originally came up at about the time Clipper was being considered, it was pointed out that banning encryption means also banning secure authentication because secure authentication can be used to make encryption. That means the government would be able to forge false authentication; digital signatures would be useless. It would also be impossible to secure a digital chain of evidence.
That's because the FBI doesn't have the cool kids toys like the NSA/CIA which has all the backdoors into these devices.
Since the NSA forwards intelligence to the DEA for domestic law enforcement purposes, it is safe to assume that they forward intelligence to the FBI as well.
How does that work exactly? Which business would halt all activities in the US rather than submit to the hypothetical law? And don't kid yourself that it'd move their taxes out of reach either, because with that kind of political atmosphere, seizing local assets is a no brainer. Look at what the EU is doing with Ireland right now and you can assume based on our recent history that the US will be even more aggressive.
I'm giving you the benefit of a doubt; assuming you're considering the hypothetical argument, rather than being stupid enough to think you're arguing against someone desirous of the situation I described. Your response could have made that clearer.
Maybe your brain was clouded by alcohol or THC or whatever and this reply finds you a little more sober. If so, please put a post-it note on your computer that you must never, ever, support the fourth amendment online unless sober. If you weren't intoxicated, then you should go back and read the links I provided in the first post. You obviously missed the point of my comments. You're arguing on the same side I am, but doing it so badly that you're hurting our cause.
Seriously, it's like every time I try to work on the arguments to protect the fourth amendment's purpose; the idiots unite to make it look bad. Practically every reply is a comment supposedly in favor of protecting strong cryptography, but actually helping the case of people who want to break it or outlaw it. I can't help but wonder if all the idiots with stupid arguments are actually secretly fighting to weaken encryption.
It's like being an advocate of first amendment lately. It's hard to get anyone to care about protecting freedom because all the Nazis are screaming that they're on our side.
In face Face ID won't work unless your eyes are open and you are looking at the phone, so you have that option in your silly scenario.
But the real answer is that in both cases you press the lock button 5 times quickly while the phone is in your pocket and the phone will require a passcode to continue.
Actually the real answer is that noone cares that much about getting into your phone. Because you are irrelevant.
No more cell phones or digital devices of any kind for any American.
That or no more FBI
I like the latter better
No doubt in ages past, the invention of the opaque envelope was seen as a boon to criminals and terrorists and revolutionaries. "How can we protect our kingdom if letters and even large documents can pass from person to person, completely hidden from His Magesty's government's eyes?"
As for boxes and homes with locks? "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." Ban them!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.