Big tech vs. public safety
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nother mass murder, another smartphone owned by the undisputed killer, another cold, dark brick in a wall of devices that law enforcers cannot access to decode motives or collaborators or find evidence that might help prove an awful crime, or prevent more.
While the FBI contemplates what if anything can be done to crack the encrypted device belonging to Texas church shooter Devin Patrick Kelley, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein rightly says enough is enough is enough.
The problem is by now well established: Data from phone logs to chat histories to photographs and beyond are increasingly locked away on gadgets built with ever more robust technology making them utterly impenetrable.
So, even when authorities have a fully legal warrant from a judge that would make evidence accessible were it locked way in a desk or trunk or safe or cabinet, it’s entirely out of reach.
Rosenstein says this cannot stand, for it “surely costs lives.” He implicitly fingers Apple as a company that “purposely designed the operating system so that the company cannot open the phone even with an order from a federal judge.”
And adds — it’s an outrage that this even needs to be spelled out amid a wave of mass shootings and ISIS-inspired terrorist plots — “When you shoot dozens of innocent American citizens, we want law enforcement to investigate your communications and stored data. We expect police and prosecutors to investigate such horrendous crimes.”
Repeat those words 6,900 times over, once for each of the devices the feds were unable to access in the 11 months through August, despite warrants authorizing searches.
And multiply it many more times for all the devices held by local prosecutors pursuing murders, rapes, child pornography cases and more.
America should be no more resigned to hightech secret coding of criminals’ means of communication than it should be to the open and free sale of assault rifles or accessories that render them more efficient killing machines.
Not so long ago, this was the crusade of former FBI Director Jim Comey; he hoped to persuade Silicon Valley companies to change their ways.
As Apple charges ahead to make its devices ever harder to crack, as Google joins in to make its Android operating system just as impervious, it’s time for government to stop holding out hope that big tech will come around.
Instead, Congress must finally set workable limits on encryption. Let people protect their data from rogue hackers. But when the good guys need to get in, give them the key.