Less than a week after the attacks in Paris — while the public and policymakers were still reeling, and the investigation had barely gotten off the ground — Cy Vance, Manhattan’s District Attorney, released a policy paper calling for legislation requiring companies to provide the government with backdoor access to their smartphones and other mobile devices. This is the first concrete proposal of this type since September 2014, when FBI Director James Comey reignited the “Crypto Wars” in response to Apple’s and Google’s decisions to use default encryption on their smartphones. Though Comey seized on Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt their devices by default, his concerns are primarily related to end-to-end encryption, which protects communications that are in transit. Vance’s proposal, on the other hand, is only concerned with device encryption, which protects data stored on phones.
It is still unclear whether encryption played any role in the Paris attacks, though we do know that the attackers were using unencrypted SMS text messages on the night of the attack, and that some of them were even known to intelligence agencies and had previously been under surveillance. But regardless of whether encryption was used at some point during the planning of the attacks, as I lay out below, prohibiting companies from selling encrypted devices would not prevent criminals or terrorists from being able to access unbreakable encryption.
Vance’s primary complaint is that Apple’s and Google’s decisions to provide their customers with more secure devices through encryption interferes with criminal investigations. He claims encryption prevents law enforcement from accessing stored data like iMessages, photos and videos, Internet search histories, and third party app data. He makes several arguments to justify his proposal to build backdoors into encrypted smartphones, but none of them hold water.
Comment posted 1 week ago in reply to Zzgomes ..... by Ed Carp. Finally someone who gets it! OBTW, i replaced Windows 7 with Linux Mint over a year ago and hope to never return. The thing is though, i am not a member of a Windows productivity workgroup, nor do i need to connect to any Windows databases or servers. Essentially i am not using any Windows business process or systems. It's all Internet!!! 100% Web and Cloud Services systems. And that's why i can dump Windows without a blink! While working for Sursen Corp, it was a very different story. I had to have Windows XP and Windows 7, plus MSOffice 2003-2007, plus Internet Explorer with access to SharePoint, Skydrive/Live.com. It's all about the business processes and systems you're part of, or must join. And that's exactly why the Linux Desktop has failed. Give Cloud Computing the time needed to re-engineer and re-invent those many Windows business processes, and the Linux Desktop might suceed. The trick will be in advancing both the Linux Desktop and Application developer layers to target the same Cloud Computing services mobility targets. ..... Windows will take of itself. The real fight is in the great transition of business systems and processes moving from the Windows desktp/workgroup productivity model to the Cloud. Linux Communities must fight to win the great transition. And yes, in the end this all about a massive platform shift. The fourth wave of computing began with the Internet, and will finally close out the desktop client/server computing model as the Web evolves into the Cloud. excerpt: Most posters here have it completely wrong...the *real* reason Linux doesn't have a decent penetration into the desktop market is quite obvious if you look at the most successful desktop in history - Windows. All this nonsense about binary driver compatibility, distro fragmentation, CORBA, and all the other red herrings that people are talking about are completely irrelevant