A tiny violin is playing for Police Commissioner Bill Bratton today because he’s unhappy that Google and Apple’s new encryption techniques won’t allow law enforcement to search your phone.
Responding to the companies’ latest effort to make phones with default encryption settings that even they can’t access, Bratton says:
It’s disgraceful that these two companies are… consciously… thwarting the effort of law enforcement to… access their devices, and the harm that they’re going to cause with their greed basically in terms of trying to increase sales is disgraceful.
Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance echoed the commissioner saying, “Google now proudly says, ‘We can’t respond to search warrants because we’ve stopped our ability to unlock them.” He believes, “At the end of the day, the victims are going to be Google’s loyal customers.”
Neither men seem to acknowledge that the reason this effort will be profitable is because it’s what the public is demanding. While people do want increased security as protection against hackers, the true outrage began when NSA documents were leaked by Edward Snowden, revealing that consumers need privacy protection from the government as well.
Authorities will say they need access because of real criminals but the potential abuses of that power have already been thoroughly demonstrated. (Photo: Getty)
