http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/politics/fbi-apple-google-privacy/
People are ecstatic after finding out that Apple and Google are encrypting their products in order to prevent law enforcement, such as the FBI, from attaining information from their phone. Now what is encryption exactly [for those who don't know]? Encryption is a form of data called ciphertext that cannot be understood by people of higher authority. You may be more familiar with decryption, which law enforcement uses to convert into understandable data used for criminal investigation. Which leads us to Apple's latest release of iOS8 where the operating system could no longer bypass the smartphone user passwords. Google also claims that this same technology has been in use for many of their Android products. This, to the FBI, was the last straw. Federal law states that U.S. tech companies are to cooperate with surveillance program requests. Many people disagree with the FBI's warrants [who wouldn't?] that law enforcement should be able to access important information involved in kidnappings and terrorism.
I think we can all agree here that some favoritism is shown to Apple and Google. Besides the fact that it's difficult for the FBI now to investigate active crimes on certain devices, people who are innocent in general have always been paranoid of their security being "not that secure". If we go back to the discussion everyone was involved in about the NSA reading private text messages, I'm not that surprised that people are appealed to the idea of restricted access. And let's not forget about the current iCloud incident. This actually has been a request from many, I believe, and Apple seems to be gaining the praise for it. There are two sides to this situation: That government access to an individual's data is a violation of a person's rights [if an officer needs a warrant to search your home, why is it okay to search your phone without one?], and that criminal investigation is now weaker.
Yeah, the FBI has definitely favored Google and Apple in the past. But I don't think Apple or Google would do this because they care about their customers privacy; they've (at least Google has) allegedly sold information to the FBI for years. This is probably just a publicity stunt sort of thing to get their customers feeling safe and less paranoid about their information being sold.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing would be a violation of privacy and rights. It makes me so mad when the government feels that it's entitled to do whatever it wants. Just because individuals work for the government doesn't mean they have "more rights" than an average human. I'm happy there are other people out there who feel the same way.
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