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In this case, though, it's not the people who are hiding it - the device manufacturer is. You've always been free to encrypt your data if you so choose. Nobod

In this case, though, it's not the people who are hiding it - the device manufacturer is. You've always been free to encrypt your data if you so choose. Nobody is buying a new iPhone because of the encryption; they're buying it because it's a newer, better version of an existing product - a product that police could search for evidence before if they had a warrant. If you want to keep your data away from the police, there's never been anything stopping you. If I'm the victim of a crime, I don't want some third party deciding whether or not the police can collect the evidence.

4bpp 11y ago
Yeah, there are good reason why we don't let crime victims organise the investigation or decide the perpetrator's punishment. Crime and law enforcement are not the only consideration in this case; if I'm a journalist or activist, I don't want those who I antagonise as part of my work to be able to access my data by leveraging their power and connections. More generally, if I'm a citizen, I don't want those with more guns, more money and better connections than me to be able to intimidate into silence the journalists and activists I rely on to provide a counterbalance. Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier for a lot of people to imagine themselves as a victim of some high-profile crime (of the kind that perhaps happens to .01% of the US population every year) yearning for justice than to visualise the full extent of the small and large influence on their everyday civic life. Speaking with some degree of frustration, this reminds me of a cliché of Tea Party followers arguing along the lines of "well, if I became rich, I wouldn't want to pay taxes either" and generally being more eager to defend the interests of an imaginary future version of themselves than their own ones.
- csandreasen 11y ago
  You're off by several orders of magnitude on your crime statistics. In 2013, 2.3% of households were victims of violent crime, while 13.1% were victims of property-related crime[1]. Do you have evidence to suggest that courts are handing out search warrants like candy to intimidate journalists? Crime is an everyday problem; harassing journalists and activists is not. A solution that prevents police from investigating a crime just because a cell phone is involved in order to further protect rights that largely weren't being violated to begin with isn't a particularly good solution. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5111 http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5111
  - 4bpp 11y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the probability that you will become the victim of /any/ crime is that low - rather, I argue that the sort of emotion-arousing crime that almost invariably gets thrown around as an example to argue against ubiquitous encryption (like an abductee being driven around multiple states and raped for weeks) is actually rare. I would imagine that your typical story of being mugged or having your picket fence demolished (what does it take for a mugging to count as violent crime?) would be far less likely to arouse feelings of "this is so terrible, how can we possibly allow encryption on iPhones if people doing this will get to walk free because of it". If you think that helping some small additional fraction of those 2.3% of households or 13.1% of people a conviction of the perpetrators is a more valuable thing than strong encryption, then it would be more intellectually honest to evoke a typical case in your argument than an extremal one.
    - csandreasen 11y ago
      I'm not advocating for no encryption on phones. There are schemes that would allow for your data to be encrypted and secure from even the cops except in cases where they have a acquired a warrant. The argument that there is no way to do so is more political than technical. This is a solved problem, cryptographically speaking. I think it's intellectually dishonest to wave away legitimate criminal investigations but prop up harassment of activists. I think it's a dangerous precedent when just months after the Supreme Court strikes a major win for privacy advocates by saying that all cell phone searches require a warrant, Apple turns around around and essentially says that isn't good enough - now people who don't even know what encryption is will be immune from any search, with or without a warrant. When a popular tech company can make a Supreme Court ruling moot, I think there needs to be a bit more discussion on the matter.
      - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        > There are schemes that would allow for your data to be encrypted and secure from even the cops except in cases where they have a acquired a warrant. The argument that there is no way to do so is more political than technical. This is a solved problem, cryptographically speaking. It very much is not. All of the schemes that purport to do so involve a systemic risk that the master key is lost to a hostile foreign government or criminal organization, and they inherently prohibit forward secrecy.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> In this case, though, it's not the people who are hiding it - the device manufacturer is. That is not correct. What Apple has done is give control over whether the information is hidden or not to the person with the password for the device. > Nobody is buying a new iPhone because of the encryption; they're buying it because it's a newer, better version of an existing product - a product that police could search for evidence before if they had a warrant. You can't win this by making a relativistic argument. The world was not in a state of anarchy before everyone started carrying around iPhones.

4bpp 11y ago

Yeah, there are good reason why we don't let crime victims organise the investigation or decide the perpetrator's punishment. Crime and law enforcement are not the only consideration in this case; if I'm a journalist or activist, I don't want those who I antagonise as part of my work to be able to access my data by leveraging their power and connections. More generally, if I'm a citizen, I don't want those with more guns, more money and better connections than me to be able to intimidate into silence the journalists and activists I rely on to provide a counterbalance. Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier for a lot of people to imagine themselves as a victim of some high-profile crime (of the kind that perhaps happens to .01% of the US population every year) yearning for justice than to visualise the full extent of the small and large influence on their everyday civic life. Speaking with some degree of frustration, this reminds me of a cliché of Tea Party followers arguing along the lines of "well, if I became rich, I wouldn't want to pay taxes either" and generally being more eager to defend the interests of an imaginary future version of themselves than their own ones.

csandreasen 11y ago
You're off by several orders of magnitude on your crime statistics. In 2013, 2.3% of households were victims of violent crime, while 13.1% were victims of property-related crime[1]. Do you have evidence to suggest that courts are handing out search warrants like candy to intimidate journalists? Crime is an everyday problem; harassing journalists and activists is not. A solution that prevents police from investigating a crime just because a cell phone is involved in order to further protect rights that largely weren't being violated to begin with isn't a particularly good solution. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5111 http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5111
- 4bpp 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the probability that you will become the victim of /any/ crime is that low - rather, I argue that the sort of emotion-arousing crime that almost invariably gets thrown around as an example to argue against ubiquitous encryption (like an abductee being driven around multiple states and raped for weeks) is actually rare. I would imagine that your typical story of being mugged or having your picket fence demolished (what does it take for a mugging to count as violent crime?) would be far less likely to arouse feelings of "this is so terrible, how can we possibly allow encryption on iPhones if people doing this will get to walk free because of it". If you think that helping some small additional fraction of those 2.3% of households or 13.1% of people a conviction of the perpetrators is a more valuable thing than strong encryption, then it would be more intellectually honest to evoke a typical case in your argument than an extremal one.
  - csandreasen 11y ago
    I'm not advocating for no encryption on phones. There are schemes that would allow for your data to be encrypted and secure from even the cops except in cases where they have a acquired a warrant. The argument that there is no way to do so is more political than technical. This is a solved problem, cryptographically speaking. I think it's intellectually dishonest to wave away legitimate criminal investigations but prop up harassment of activists. I think it's a dangerous precedent when just months after the Supreme Court strikes a major win for privacy advocates by saying that all cell phone searches require a warrant, Apple turns around around and essentially says that isn't good enough - now people who don't even know what encryption is will be immune from any search, with or without a warrant. When a popular tech company can make a Supreme Court ruling moot, I think there needs to be a bit more discussion on the matter.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > There are schemes that would allow for your data to be encrypted and secure from even the cops except in cases where they have a acquired a warrant. The argument that there is no way to do so is more political than technical. This is a solved problem, cryptographically speaking. It very much is not. All of the schemes that purport to do so involve a systemic risk that the master key is lost to a hostile foreign government or criminal organization, and they inherently prohibit forward secrecy.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> In this case, though, it's not the people who are hiding it - the device manufacturer is. That is not correct. What Apple has done is give control over whether the information is hidden or not to the person with the password for the device. > Nobody is buying a new iPhone because of the encryption; they're buying it because it's a newer, better version of an existing product - a product that police could search for evidence before if they had a warrant. You can't win this by making a relativistic argument. The world was not in a state of anarchy before everyone started carrying around iPhones.