“U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urged technology companies to preserve law-enforcement access to smartphone data, responding to new privacy features from Apple Inc. and Google Inc. that he said would hamper investigations of child sex abuse,” Del Quentin Wilber reports for Bloomberg News. “‘It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy,’ he said. ‘When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Think of The Children™. Whenever you hear that line of horseshit, look for ulterior motives. Fear mongers: Those who use of fear, scare tactics, and emotional appeals in attempts to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end.
“Holder is the highest-profile official to protest the encryption of phones by Google and Apple,” Wilber reports. “The dispute is the latest flare-up pitting the federal government against the nation’s leading technology companies since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed last year the extent of U.S. snooping on phone and Internet communications — and how companies cooperated.”
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s get real: Google’s promise of encryption will take several years to roll out to significant numbers of fragmandroid sufferers. Apple’s is already in the majority of iOS users hands right now.
Wilber reports, “In remarks prepared for a speech in Washington, Holder didn’t say how the Justice Department hoped to change the companies’ minds but hoped they ‘would be willing to work with us to ensure that law enforcement retains the ability, with court-authorization, to lawfully obtain information in the course of an investigation, such as catching kidnappers and sexual predators.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Ooh, doubling down on Think of The Children™ – and from a short-timer, hell-bent on amassing a minor fortune from the private sector, no less. Desperate times for those who serially ignore the Fourth Amendment, these are.
“Apple described the new measures on Sept. 17 on its website, noting that it can no longer bypass customers’ passcodes and ‘therefore cannot access this data,'” Wilber reports. “‘It’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running’ the latest version of the company’s operating system, iOS 8, the Cupertino, California-based company said.”
“Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey entered the debate last week, telling reporters that he opposed the companies’ decision. He said the FBI was working to get them to change the policies,” Wilber reports. “‘What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law,’ Comey said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Stop moaning and whining, you lazy bastard, and go read the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution for what sounds like will be the first time in your life.
That is the law you’ve placed yourself and your cronies above, Comey. The supreme law of the land which you swore an oath to uphold, no less.
Prior to 2007, there were no evidence bonanzas from warrantless searches and seizures available right in suspects’ pockets and, yet, somehow, law enforcement personnel actually managed to solve crimes without infringing citizen’s basic constitutional rights. Use valid search warrants the way you used them before Steve Jobs gave the world the modern smartphone and tablet. It’s past time to return to following the U.S. Constitution. If it takes force from leaders like Apple for constitutional rights to actually be enforced, so be it.
The U.S. government brought this upon itself.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Eric Holder, get lost and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related articles:
What if Osama bin Laden had an iPhone? – September 26, 2014
FBI blasts Apple for protective users’ privacy by locking government, police out of iPhones and iPads – September 25, 2014
Apple thinks different about privacy – September 23, 2014
Apple’s iOS Activation Lock reduces iPhone thefts, Samsung phone thefts skyrocket – September 18, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for government, police – even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
Would you trade privacy for national security? Most Americans wouldn’t – August 6, 2014
Apple begins encrypting iCloud email sent between providers – July 15, 2014
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
U.S. NSA seeks to build quantum computer to crack most types of encryption – January 3, 2014
Apple’s iMessage encryption trips up U.S. feds’ surveillance – April 4, 2013
MDN knows little about Android apparently.
Device encryption was introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich on Android, which means it came out in 2011.
The only change is that Google is going to enable it by default.
I agree with the overall MDN take, but I don’t get “short-termer” dig.
The cure for the scum who abuse children is not allowing law enforcement unfettered access to our digital privacy. The answer is castration without anesthesia followed by life without parole.
MDN’s take on this is so good, I’m going to PDF this page and keep it. Holder (and the rest of Obama’s administration) is corrupt. It’s people like Holder that I want protection from.
Eric Holder is a traitorous POS.