It's easy to be abstract - what if it had been your family & family? Or do strangers not count?
> there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering
which you've not given, twice.
> It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.
It's difficult and I see what you're saying even if I don't yet agree.
I get that elsewhere too - ask about the limits of self-arming and bingo, downvotes without answers, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606212
It's the online version of turning away with an angry huff because they don't like where this is going.
OK, back to your point, and thanks for a decent response. The encryption issue is difficult and I made it clear I was ambivalent eg. "I care greatly about privacy...". I fully understand the implications of a legal backdoor, and I don't want it [x]. But if phones are the main comms tool now, and if further killings are pending and can be prevented, at least ask the questions.
So I'm wondering if there is some compromise or something. Some way of putting a backdoor in which a 2nd party has a key to (not the gov't). Or something. Yes I'm aware that gov'ts may unfairly lean on the 2nd party. Is there some way through this? Let's try to be creative.
Perhaps this is a mathematically way of proving, based on some assumptions, that I can't have what I want then we can stop wasting time on it and we can get on with the fight against government strong-arming.
Can we at least have a conversation on it without angry, downvote'y silences? This isn't a constructive. It gets us nowhere.
edit, add clarification [x] that if a compromise can't be found and I had to choose between the government having backdoors or not, I'd fall pretty rapidly on the side of Fuck, No. They will be abused. I probably know this better than you.
However we have consistently shown that we are often incapable of competently using that information even when say the family members of a terrorist call us on the telephone and forewarn us let alone when the worrisome info is buried in a mountain of data.
We don't need less privacy or better technology to gather intel. We actually need a smarter system and better tools to sift the mountain of data we actually already possess.
For example if you wanted to know who the person associated with he almost certainly communicated with people in a way that could be obtained by serving a warrant to his ISP.
If you want to know what influenced him looking at his web traffic would be advantageous.
Instead of working backwards from hypothetical lets reason the correct way. What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.
None.
Now ask: what evidence do we have that compelling evidence DOES NOT exist on this particular device.
None again! We can conclude nothing either way.
Honest question, what am I supposed to make of this?
I draw the line on the side of privacy. I'm absolutely fine with potential unresolved loose ends in a criminal investigation if it means we actually get to practice real security and gain all the privacy that entails.
Regardless of that, I'm not convinced that the actionable information they could obtain is unique to the phone; there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering. It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.