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comment by Cedar
Cedar  ·  3402 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Law Enforcement Officials’ Anti-Encryption New York Times Op-Ed

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.)