U.S. Law Enforcement Seeks to Halt Apple-Google Encryption of Mobile Data

That's an interesting idea. It's not often that people in law enforcement or military intelligence will come out publicly and say "if such-and-such adversary were to use this widely-available technology we'd be stymied!"

I agree that her uniform is largely irrelevant to the discussion. She also likely has no choice in it.

I'm trigger happy pointing out police militarization, which manifests in overt ("tanks") and subtle ways (military dress).

Perhaps it's a stretch, but I believe that militarization doesn't ease the tendency of the police to desire and acquire powers they shouldn't have.

fantastic.

This is a cost saving measure with a good PR component to it. Its expensive to comply with requests and uses up important resources. By taking the technical ability out of the equation for getting into the device itself Apple is saving itself time money and resources and looking good to the public for doing so with no legal damages.

This does not actually fully protect any ones data though. Government has full access to the cell phone companies that can with warrant provide location information including dates and times, SMS information, and can still monitor any un-encrypted traffic from a users phone. At worst Apple is providing a false sense of security to individuals that do not understand the other part of the equation, which is the Cell Phone companies and the Interweb can monitor and log stuff. But I do believe Apple that iMessage, FaceTime and the device itself is not intentionally open for spying on. But what about the other apps. Whatapp, and Blackberry messenger and Skype and all the other apps that sends data to 3rd parties. None of that is protected. But Apple only ever talks about itself not 3rd party. Take a iPhone and use only Apple software on it you will probably have the best protection in the industry for consumers. But its limited to that.

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----Start of slightly off topic but still on topic rant -----

Apples business model isn't based on data either. So when they say they don't scan your emails to profit from it I believe them. They are probably the only major ecosystem that does not need to do that. Yahoo Mail, Outlook (hotmail) mail, Gmail all have business models that provide a free service in exchange for your information. Its rooted into how they make money. Apple makes money from the sale of Hardware and direct cost services.

At the end of the day anything NOT in your head is exposed and a potential security risk. Even writing something on paper creates something to be discovered. Not putting thoughts into a tangible readable and accessible form is the first line of personal security. Followed by absolute control of what ever you do put those thoughts onto. Paper, paper goes in pocket. Paper is burned when no longer needed.

Computer, no wifi, no blue-tooth, no always on connection in your physical possession is as secure as you will get with encryption in case you lose physical possession. A smart phone can reach this level of security but defeats all of the abilities it which makes it a smart phone. You can disable data and wifi and use the phone only as a phone but at that point why do you even bother owning it.

As the CEO of Google once said, if its something that can hurt you don't do it. In this case don't make a record of it. Dont take pictures, dont text about it, don't use a calender to plan it out. Keep it in your head. No one ever takes responsibility for there own stupidity when it comes to security. Go back to a book and pen if you are worried. But that can be seized and read if arrested.

Technology used right can offer better protection then ever before.

I remember reading about Hal Finney about a year ago, and then about the cypherpunks and all, including about PGP. And I was surprised to see how recently an encryption standard was deemed a weapon, and sharing the algorithm was deemed exports of weapons, a punishable offense, particularly if say, an Iranian would come to read the algorithm on some forum post! That meant jail-time, treason!

Ridiculous, I thought surely we'd be a bit more enlightened about these things in the 1990s. It felt almost comical, as if it was a joke.

Now this. Two consumer companies we all know and love, implement an encryption standard by default that has been openly available to the world for many years, and we already see talk of preventing it through congress. It feels like we're back in 1993.

Just gonna leave this here: http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/how-would-...

How would you want it wrapped? Protect the kids or anti-terrorism.

They literally wrapped this one up twice, mentioning both the terrorism and the pedophiles. Sigh.