Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

I think the big issue here isn't that Apple is now encrypting iPhones. In general, being able to secure the data on your phone is a huge benefit for the average consumer. People lose their phones all of the time, and you have no idea who is going to find your lost phone and what they're going to do with the data on it. Given the amount of sensitive data people throw on their phones without thinking, Apple is probably doing more to prevent petty crime and identify theft by encrypting the data on iPhones.

The big issue as I see it, though, is that Apple isn't advertising this as a means of protecting yourself from criminals. Instead, they advertised it as a means of preventing Apple from complying with warrants. Warrants constitute an violation of a person's privacy which is explicitly allowed in the constitution. There's a good reason we have them, and a process that's been in place for a few centuries to limit their abuse. More often than not, the bad guy is not the federal government, and the public is served by allowing the police to investigate specific individuals under reasonable suspicion with specific limitations as authorized by the courts. If people have a problem with the way warrants are issued or how the police carry out investigations, they should seek to change that process, not try to circumvent them.

This isn't going to keep out the NSA. It only affects that data physically residing on your phone, and when was the last time the NSA had your phone physically in its possession? This likely isn't going to stop actual law enforcement officials from getting access to the data on your phone. Unless you're typing in a strong password every time you pull your phone out of your pocket, the FBI will likely be able to brute force your phone to gather evidence with little difficulty, providing the courts allow them to do so. On that front, the only thing this has really accomplished is allowing Apple to give the middle finger to the feds in an attempt to appease a customer base who thinks the government is out to get them.

It's the government's fault that this is a feature that companies would a) build and b) market as a key feature. The public finds this attractive because of their nefarious activities. We reap what we sow.

The benefits of being able to crack phones quickly in the few cases where it is in the public interest to do so do not outweigh the harm that would be done to the public if it were possible. Further, the types of people that really want to harm us are using third party or custom tools that encrypt everything anyway.

The feds and local police will lose a few more low-level drug cases, and maybe a few insider trading cases, due to Apple's security enhancements. I'm OK with that.

The most important takeaway of the "post-Snowden Era" is that both companies and the government lie.

Apple now is in the damage control mode, trying to undo the massive credibility hit dealt by Snowden revelations. But since they were in bed with the NSA for several years prior, I really doubt they have an option of divorce. If they were strong-armed into cooperation before, it'd be foolish to assume that they can get out of it on such a flimsy technicality as a in-device encryption. So what's likely to be happening is that Apple started encrypting, the state started saying "Oh, noes! It's unbreakable. Buy American again." and behind the scenes they still cooperate in a less in-your-face fashion. Something as simple as initializing PRNG on the device in a predictable manner - piece of cake to do, very hard to detect, but exploitable on the spot with a bit of foreknowledge. Where there's a will, there's a way. And the will is there.

We are not freer than ever. The ability to make fundamental change in our political systems is more contained to a narrow and doomed range near the status quo than ever.

"Anarchy." You keep using that word. You are equating the potential for absolute privacy in communication with "anarchy." Do you have an explanation for how that is the vanguard of anarchy?

Freedom: Supposedly enlightened places like the US are governed under a system where the rights of individuals are assumed to be open-ended and expanding as new technologies enable more freedom travel, communicate, etc., and the powers of government are fenced-in until the people consent to extend those powers.

If I were the NSA, I would publicly ream Apple about the fact that I can't access the encrypted data on iPhones.

I would privately thank them for putting in another backdoor that actually lets me read all the data I want from them.

It's a win-win. Apple gets to look like a privacy crusader. The NSA gets access to all phones. And best of all, iPhone users get to believe that their phone is unhackable, so they won't take the same precautions to hide their illegal activities.