They are no worse than locksmiths advertising the ability to crack safes.

It's more like a locksmith advertising the ability to break anyone's safe that contains details on every place you've ever been, purchase you've ever made, and person you've ever communicated with. Phones are far more ubiquitous and contain far more information than any family safe. Not a fair comparison.

#3 is the real treasure trove.

Is it acceptable for this company to sell it to Saudi Arabian police where it's a crime for a woman to run away from home?

https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa...

Or how about Australia raiding journalists for whistleblowing on abuses conducted by their arm forces in war: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48522729

Perhaps you agree or perhaps you don't. But the issue is more complex than saying that "everyone should help the police"

Yes, a lot of the effect is harmful, including in helping police do harm. But an argument that no-one should help the police is basically an argument the police shouldn't exist.

I'd argue that nobody should help the police as they exist in many modern implementations, because the police as they exist now are often bad actors. But it's not hard to imagine a police force that's held to a higher standard such that they actually are trustworthy. The argument doesn't have to be "police shouldn't exist"--it could be "police should be better".

My previous post was responding to your claim "But an argument that no-one should help the police is basically an argument the police shouldn't exist", which is incorrect. The two are very different arguments.

I take "not helping" to mean not just not developing specialized products that only police can legally use, but also not calling the police in case of crime, not helping them with investigations as witnesses. Where the law permits, not selling them generic products and services (eg food). And where personal circumstances permit, not working for a company that does business with them, deplatforming them, etc.

Many reasonable people do indeed take the position that the recent development of a paramilitary force, professionally tasked with keeping domestic peace, has been a bad way to achieve law and order.

So sure, I'll make an argument that today's police - and the private companies who enable them to perform end-arounds on quintessential rights - are contrary to the western common-law tradition and that society will be better when we end this short experiment and move on to a different approach.

No, as I said, it's the flaunting it that surprises me.

Probably.

I've met a lot of people who argue against the right to privacy. Most of those people are in positions where they profit from trampling people's privacy in some way: social media integrations, profiting from advertising, law enforcement/spying, or simply deprioritizing security. Lots of those folks are on Hacker News.

One horribly annoying decision of Android is that the encryption passphrase cannot be different from the unlock pin, leaving users with two choices:

- Have a long, secure password that actually makes Android's encryption worth a damn. They then have to enter this password every time they want to unlock their phone. I don't think many people go for this option.

- Have a short usable password so you can painlessly unlock your phone. However, then encryption only provides a marginal benefit

(- I decided to use a long password with fingerprint unlock as a compromise, which creates its own security problems.)

It seems that they ignore that a powered off devices could easily provide much stronger protection by allowing a separate encryption password. And if the device is powered on, limiting unlock attempts might be somewhat useful to frustrate attacks against short lock screen passwords.

I think this only works for an attacker model that excludes reasonably sophisticated attackers. I expect this to thwart pickpockets or muggers, but not the police or anyone more sophisticated than that.

That's one way to look at it. Another is that they provide law enforcement the ability to catch and trial criminals (for instance sex offenders) who are using the phone manufacturer's naivete to hide their nefarious deeds.

It depends on your point of view.

The sex offender spectre doesn't change that.

> Under the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to privacy is, in effect, contained in Article 8, the right to respect for family and private life. It is important to know that it is also a “qualified” right. That means it is not absolute, and can be interfered with in certain limited situations, for example to protect national security or freedom of expression. However, any interference has to be necessary and proportionate.

https://rightsinfo.org/the-right-to-privacy-and-why-it-matte...

It's like saying that because hidden recording devices can be abused it should be illegal (or at least one should be ashamed of) to create it.

For many, I bet the answer is yes. Plus I bet they sleep at night justifying their actions as helping to hunt down criminals and terrorists, (which I think some of them may be thinking of as having a close experience with).

Of course these are all post-hoc justifications for the primary motivator, money.

It’s only a solved problem if you’re using high entropy passwords (6 digit pins are not). Otherwise you’re relying on some sort of anti-hammering/auto erase to make up for it.

There was an attack years ago, where you could kill power to the device after failing the attempt but before it incremented the attempt counter, but they fixed that, and that may have predated the Secure Enclave anyway (and required taking apart the phone, which I assume this on-premises device doesn’t do).

Flaunting this is great advertising for them - and most importantly free advertising for them. Not saying it’s right, but this is how they get customers when direct word of mouth is too slow.

If you ask around I'm sure most people think LE should be able to do this for security reasons. Not saying I agree or disagree but that's the way it is.

Why shouldn't they be able to access their data?