What to make of this nonsense….
While the newest Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOGL) smartphones will automatically encrypt data stored on them, that won’t keep U. S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies from obtaining evidence linked to the devices.
Marketing by the two companies in which they pledge to shield photos, documents, contact lists and other data from the prying eyes of government or hackers won plaudits from privacy advocates. It also drew condemnation from U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director James Comey and local police officials who say it will make it harder to investigate crimes ranging from child abuse to drug trafficking and terrorism.
Meh.
First, it’s my device, not someone else’s. If you market something to me as having encryption then you had better deliver that or you’re committing fraud. Period, end of discussion.
Second, as far as the authorities being able to break into devices, tough ****.
Third, 99% of users, including criminals, use easy-to-break-passwords. Therefore for most people this is a red herring anyway because they’re stupid and think that a 4-digit passcode means something when it comes time to want into the data. It does not.
However, this is not just about criminals using devices, it is more, in fact, about criminals stealing devices and the data on them, and it becomes more and more important as time goes on and more data becomes stored on them. Specifically, credit card data and similar.
There are people who think Apple Pay, for example, is an “exceedingly secure payment system.” Uh huh. Sure it is. It may look that way because it doesn’t have a credit card number in the phone, but that doesn’t matter because the authorizing token, which is identical in function, is.
This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2014-10-05.
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