Outgoing Attorney General
Eric Holder is perpetuating a bipartisan raid on privacy, reports
The Washington Post. He’s calling on tech makers to
provide “backdoors” to products and services so that law
enforcement can route around encryption and get bad guys such as
“kidnappers and sexual predators.”
So that’s why the NSA and other agencies have been hoovering up
data from every source possible? To protect us better during a time
of ongoing reductions in violent crime?
“It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job
while still adequately protecting personal privacy,” Holder said at
a conference on child sexual abuse, according to a text of his
prepared remarks. “When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs
to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and
protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is
worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so.”In his comments, Holder became the highest government
official to publicly chastise technology companies for developing
systems that make it difficult for law enforcement officials to
collect potential evidence, even when they have search warrants.
Though he didn’t mention Apple and Google by
name, his remarks followed their announcements this month of new
smartphone encryption policies that have sparked a sharp government
response, including from FBI
Director James B. Comey last week.
The push for backdoor access by police is an old one. During the
1990s, the Clinton administration’s insistence on various forms of
easy access to fax machines, computers, and everything else with a
plug was widely booed by the emerging digerati (who else
remembers discussions of the “Clipper Chip” and “key
escrow”?).
In the wake of ongoing revelations of widespread surveillance of
data and other electronic communications, it’s hard to believe that
the government will be selective or restrained in any access it has
to anything. And everything.
But don’t worry, right? Only the guilty have something to
encrypt.
Reason on
Eric Holder’s legacy.
Take it away, Mr. Mojo Risin:
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