Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and his counterparts in Paris, London and Madrid took to the New York Times op-ed page Tuesday morning to pose a flawed argument against default encryption of mobile phones, a service being commercialized and implemented gradually by Apple and Google.
The op-ed misstated the extent of the obstacles to law enforcement, understating the many other ways officials bearing warrants can still collect the information they need or want — even when confronted with an encrypted, password-protected device.
The authors failed to acknowledge the value to normal people of protecting their private data from thieves, hackers and government dragnets.
And they demanded — in the name of the “safety of our communities” — a magical, mathematically impossible scenario in which communications are safeguarded from everyone except law enforcement.
Apple and Google are attempting to provide strong, reliable and user-friendly encrypted systems for their customers. A user who has installed iOS 8 on an iPhone automatically encrypts text messages, photos, contacts, call history and other sensitive data simply by using a passcode.
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