Article – Data encryption in sharp focus after deadly attacks

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At the same time, he said, in New York “there are more than 100 investigations stopped in their tracks because there are phones that can’t be analyzed. These are murderers, rapists, pedophiles who are not being prosecuted.”

Hayes said that in the current environment, tech firms are not likely to voluntarily make changes to help law enforcement.

“The only way they would be persuaded is through legislation,” he said.

And if that wasn’t enough to to make your privacy-gland spasm, try this:

Federal investigators looking into the San Bernardino massacre deployed a spy plane overhead after the attacks in an apparent attempt to find additional suspects, Daily Mail Online can reveal.The Department of Homeland Security is said to have put up the single engine craft over the California city and ordered it to make repeated circles overhead.The craft would likely have been equipped with ‘Dirtbox’ technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects.

So….gov can pretend to be a cell phone provider in order to see if your phone is in the area, and if they come across your phone they want the manufacturer to make it easy for them to get into it and all your data. Warm fuzzies!

And, naturally, after this episode you can expect that prepaid ‘burner‘ cell phones are going to be the next target.

So, really, it looks like the only salvation for the pricvacy-minded individual is to either hope that the law will hamstring .gov (fat chance, right?) or you’re going to have to take steps to make certain that you’ll always have a way to have the ability to communicate securely over long distances. It really sucks, but this looks like the direction things are going.

4 thoughts on “Article – Data encryption in sharp focus after deadly attacks”

  2. This is a total rehash of the same tired argument: 1993 and the Clipper Chip.

    I really truly have a problem with anyone who is telling you that they have 100 serious crime investigations happening and the only thing that is preventing them from an indictment is the evidence on the phone blocked by encryption.

  3. The Clipper Chip, man I had forgotten about that. Talk about you gov use only, the consumer market just sort of spit on it, then whacked it with a shoe. But I see where you are going and I hate to agree with that.

    Will anyone have the balls to be like Blackberry used to be? I hated to give up my BB, (still have it… just in case) but so many of the apps I used on it stopped supporting the OS. Rim has a new BB out (yeeea!) running Android (booooo!) so I guess not in the future.

    In the mean time you can still run VPNs and Orbot on your Android phone… but I understand that Tor can’t be completely trusted anymore.

    As for burner cells… who didn’t see that coming after Breaking Bad showed the world how the once-and-done phone is supposed to work.

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