Here's a story you might want to pay attention to, that is, if you value your security and privacy.
WASHINGTON--The Federal Bureau of Investigation told law enforcement agencies around the country Friday it would try
to help them open locked phones or other devices as much as "legal and policy constraints" allow.
The guidance from the nation's top law-enforcement agency is in response to a surge of interest from state and local
authorities in how the agency was able to open a locked iPhone seized in the probe of a terror attack in San Bernardino,
Calif., in December.
There are some keys words in this story, "legal and policy constraints." Legal and policy constraints are about in today's society as changeable as the weather. Where does the FBI come off stating it will help local police break into cell phones? These phones are the property of privates citizens, criminal accusations or not. This issue if politicians who say they care about public opinion, though we know they really don't, should be put to a national vote.
Trumped up charges are hardly new in our system. And the onslaught of private property and private property rights of all sorts is an ongoing matter most often carried out under the guise of getting the bad folks in order to help or to protect the not so bad folks.
Now before you start to roll out your list of epithets, wait a few years when you have no cash just a plastic card in your wallet like the one 40 million Americans on food stamps have that dictate what and where you can buy and how much you paid for it. Then you can call people paranoid.
This is about collecting data. Data that can be leaked or abused, irrespective of motive or inadvertent mistakes. HIPPA laws are designed to protect one's medical records. It could be something as simple as taking anti-angiolytics for stress. If you're naive enough to think employers want to hire stress-prone employees, be one of the first to volunteer your cell phone to local authorities.
Such things can not only effect your employment but even your ability to secure a loan or get credit. Once again you have a national domestic organization interfering in local problems, local business, preempting personal privacy and liberty. For those who sing the song about you must have something to hide or you would not object obviously have never been falsely accused or caught up in such situations. We admire your naiveté. But isn't always the other guy such things happen to.
One scribe from Reuters wrote this misleading, juvenile comment.
They said most iPhone users have more to fear from criminals than from countries, and few crooks can afford anything like what it costs to break into a fully up-to-date iPhone.
Breaking into phones isn't the problem. And neither is criminals. This is an information or data fishing expedition easily applied to ordinary citizens with no history of any criminal activity except based on suspicion if even that.
The federal government already uses airplanes that can fly over areas and collect all cell phone numbers active as they scan. And, yes, they can even listen in on conversations, though they claim they don't. What they don't claim is they never have. It was used to scan phone activity after the horrible San Bernardino tragedy where they flew repeatedly, criss crossing a large area that covered miles.
This is a government supposedly reluctant to monitor a few known hostile mosques but is more than
willing to spy on its people. When do you get to scan the scanners or, for that matter, read the e-mails of every government employee irrespective of rank, pay grade or office.
We're willing to bet not anytime soon.
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