Washington Post wrote about the need for a compromise on smartphone encryption.
How to resolve this? A police “back door” for all smartphones is undesirable — a back door can and will be exploited by bad guys, too. However, with all their wizardry, perhaps Apple and Google could invent a kind of secure golden key they would retain and use only when a court has approved a search warrant. Ultimately, Congress could act and force the issue, but we’d rather see it resolved in law enforcement collaboration with the manufacturers and in a way that protects all three of the forces at work: technology, privacy and rule of law.
Whoever wrote this piece probably doesn’t grasp cryptography. And believes that chaos will reign if smartphones are encrypted.
The assumption that smartphone makers should provide a back door is flawed. If the police has a warrant to search the house, who should be responsible to unlock the house: the house owner or the company that built the house? Should builders leave a secret door, opened only with a golden key, in every house they construct? Or should the owner be the one who locks the house and chooses whether to open it to the police?
Leave a Reply