Last month Apple and Google announced improved encryption schemes for their mobile devices. Once in place, no other parties, including the companies themselves, will be capable of extracting locally stored data without the user's passcode, even if they have physical access to the device. This was great news for users worried about the troves of intimate data stored on their devices. But for the FBI, it became a flashpoint for a decades-old campaign of fearmongering to convince companies to leave their products intentionally flawed and unprotected.
The FBI and its allies in the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies have accused tech companies of building roadblocks that hamper police investigations, warning of a world where encryption allows terrorists, kidnappers and other horsemen of the infopocalypse to run wild.
During a speech at the Brookings Institution on Oct. 17, FBI Director James Comey suggested that if companies such as Apple won't build back door access into their products for law enforcement, the government should force them to.
"If the challenges of real-time interception threaten to leave us in the dark, encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place," he said. "Are we so mistrustful of government and of law enforcement that we are willing to let bad guys walk away?"
YES. YES WE ARE. AND YOU MADE US THAT WAY.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/fbi-surveillanceappleprivacyencryption.html
