- The op-ed goes on to cite numerous other “examples,” again divorced from any actual facts, of cases in which encryption supposedly “block[ed] justice”—including 74 occasions over a nine-month period in which the Manhattan district attorney’s office encountered locked iPhones. Vance has touted this statistic before. But a spokesperson for his office told Wired last month that the office handles approximately 100,000 cases in the course of a year, meaning that officials encountered encryption in less than 0.1% of cases. And Vance has never been able to explain how even one of these 74 encrypted iPhones stood in the way of a successful prosecution.
I read the Op-Ed yesterday and was pretty creeped out by it. Then this response from the EFF showed up today. Surveillance Police State anyone?
Yes, boys and girls, if you lock the doors and windows of the house you live in, you're probably a criminal, and making it very difficult for the police to get into your house. Same with your car. Want to lock your car? Why would you? Your property is not your own, the State is our star and guiding light. The government is your pal, open up every corner and crevice of your life to the government and we can all be swell pals and all so happy. Get on the happy bus, y'all, and let's all be the citizens we know we can be.
It's becomming painfully obvious even to the casual observer, isn't it? And I realized recently that the problem isn't even that people don't "get it". That could be solved. Actually, the masses don't really seem to consider "surveillance police state" that much of a big deal anymore. I don't know how many more times I can hear someone insist that it's not a problem because they personally have nothing to hide before I just throw up into their dumb complacent cattle-face.Surveillance Police State anyone?
Having studied computer forensics, I'll throw my 2p in. Encryption and proper security measures absolutely get in the way of effective law enforcement. However: The actual content of an encrypted message is practically unnecessary, law enforcement are more interested in the meta-data and building a timeline of when people communicated and with who. If the person does not wish to decrypt the messages then that isn't a huge barrier, as a good prosecution can spin it against them anyway and say that the meta data is evidence enough they were involved with this person (and can always imply they are guilty as they have not decrypted the messages etc.)