Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. and Google Inc. face renewed calls to create a workaround for smartphone encryption in the wake of the Paris attacks as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. proposed a compromise that seeks to mollify privacy advocates.
Vance and FBI Director James Comey echoed recent comments by CIA and Justice Department officials who cite the need for access to stay a step ahead of terrorists who may use encryption to hide planned attacks. Underlining their point, French authorities said predawn raids in a Paris suburb were triggered by information gleaned from a discarded mobile phone.
“The line to protect the public should not be drawn by two companies who make smartphones,” Vance said Wednesday at a cybersecurity conference in New York where he unveiled a 42-page white paper on the issue. His plan would require companies to download data for investigators with a warrant, rather than providing the government with a “backdoor.”
Let’s hope these companies continue to push back against the government’s desire to use our devices against us.
Cram it with walnuts, Comey. Because you’ll never use this for nefarious purposes…
“Cram it with walnuts”? NICE! I gotta remember that one! 🙂
And the people who die as a result… what the hell, they were strangers anyhow. And exactly like the climate-change deniers, you’ll sleep secure at night, wrapped in the warm blanket of arguments you’ll hear bandied about that no actionable intelligence ever provably came that way, anyhow.
The really, really short-sidedness of these agencies is completely mind boggling. Do they really think these terrorist organizations can’t use their OWN version of Android and modify it anyway they want completely negating any “back doors” Google may have implemented. The same goes for iOS… if the damned phones can be jailbroken anything can be installed and bypassed.
This can happen without Apple’s or Google’s or the government’s knowledge… All we’re then left with is innocent civilians running around with insecure devices while the “terrorists” still have devices that are completely inaccessible by anyone.
Now there’s a story on Slashdot where the terrorists coordinated using unencrypted SMS. I guess someone is watching the wrong things.
Keep this in mind… the Paris terrorists seem to have been using unencrypted comms (https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/signs-point-to-unencrypted-communications-between-terror-suspects/) and to have been known to authorities (https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/terrorists-were-already-known-to-authorities/)
The challenge is not only getting information – it’s separating real threats from wackos talking.
Yeah, it’s not like they can’t develop their own app.
And seriously, comparing Air Bnb and Facebook actions after the attack to Apple and Google’s encryption features, it’s like this guy doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, or he thinks people at the conf are stupid, I don’t know which one is worse…
The security services/government will never miss the opportunity to use a tragedy to further their own ends of eroding as much of everyone’s freedom as they can. If they aren’t screaming ‘terrorism, terrorism’ they are warning of the dangers of pedophiles and things that go bump in the night.
I hope people aren’t swayed by this continual barrage of scary stories and continue to oppose the surveillance state.
The story right before this in my RSS feed? This one:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_terrorist.html
If it helps you understand, the “double ROT13 encryption” used by the terrorists is a joking way of saying “no encryption at all.”
people die, it happens every day. and it’s no reason to give up our civil rights.
The problem is brain dead luddite politicians trying the guess why citizens hate this stuff!