Google and Apple Won’t Unlock Your Phone, But a Court Can Make You Do It | WIRED.

Wired isn’t sold that Apple and Google not being able to handover the content on your phone is an improvement in privacy. Wired should be more convinced by this development. The goal of privacy is not to protect the wicked, it is (among many other things) designed to foster safety, limit government intrusion, and empower citizens. One of the major concerns is unfettered government access to personal information. Now, Google and Apple customers will be notified directly if the government wants access to their information. This allows citizens to exercise their due process rights- a right that was often denied under previous practices/technology. Other technology providers will be forced to adopt similar practices. I suspect government requests will go down as they will now need to find the person, find his/her device and compel disclosure. With limited resources, Government will be forced to concentrate on cases that are high value and likely to provide results. Fishing expeditions will quickly become too expensive. I want government to be able to compel child pornographers to provide the password to hard drives that contain child porn. I don’t want the 10 people that innocently happened to correspond with the child pornographer to have to do the same. Due process matters.