Police want what police want

Look, I get it.

1. Police access to every scrap of information in the world is precisely what they want. It would (in some ways) make their job much easier. Being able to strip search people on a whim, being able to enter your house to look for stuff (whether it's there or not), knowing everything there is to know about you — all that is a good thing from the perspective of their jobs.

2. We live in a society of advocacy and contention. Our justice system is not interested in a joint discovery of the truth, but of convincing a judge and/or jury of which argued truth is real. Nobody sits around and says, "What, on balance, is the best and right way to both ensure security and respect necessary privacy?" Instead, if there's something you need, you propose it, demand it, insist on it, advocate for it, and make it clear that if you don't get your way, the terrorists / drug dealers / pedophiles win.

So I understand federal law enforcement, and local law enforcement, both realizing that being able to crack into encrypted phones would be a good thing for their job, and treating it as a moral imperative that we do so with no consideration as to the unintended consequences.

That doesn't make it good idea that we should automatically trust because the police are asking for it. In fact, it remains a pretty awful idea.

Originally shared by +Boing Boing:

Manhattan District Attorney demands backdoors in all mobile operating systems http://boingboing.net/2015/11/18/manhattan-da-calls-for-backdoo.html

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