- From: Eric J. Bowman <eric@bisonsystems.net>
- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 18:16:26 -0700
- To: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
- Cc: Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote: > > President Barack Obama said Friday that police and spies should > not be locked out of encrypted smartphones and messaging apps, taking > his first public stance in a simmering battle over private > communications in the digital age. > > ... > > "If we find evidence of a terrorist plot ... and despite having > a phone number, despite having a social media address or email > address, we can't penetrate that, that's a problem," Obama said. > He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the > problem. "They're patriots." > Quite the waffle from his first inauguration speech, when he supported Franklin's notion that there is no rational tradeoff between liberty and security. This is a naive (or evil, depending on POV) statement. If the government has evidence of a terrorist plot, then surely a warrant may be obtained to compel the collection of that data and any passwords required to obtain or access it. Or prioritize NSA's compute power to crack. Quite the difference from requiring a backdoor for warrantless surveillance, particularly coming from a "constitutional scholar". Obama's real beef seems to be needing a warrant, not that such data is unobtainable by the government per se. -Eric
Received on Thursday, 22 January 2015 01:17:14 UTC