Law enforcement agencies across the country have purchased GrayKey, a relatively cheap tool for bypassing the encryption on iPhones, while the FBI pushes again for encryption backdoors, Motherboard reported (at http://bit.ly/2JJygfg) on Thursday. From the report:
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that law enforcement agencies are ‘increasingly unable to access’ evidence stored on encrypted devices.
Wray is not telling the whole truth.
Police forces and federal agencies around the country have bought relatively cheap tools to unlock up-to-date iPhones and bypass their encryption, according to a Motherboard investigation based on several caches of internal agency documents, online records, and conversations with law enforcement officials. Many of the documents were obtained by Motherboard using public records requests.
The news highlights the going dark debate, in which law enforcement officials say they cannot access evidence against criminals. But easy access to iPhone hacking tools also hamstrings the FBI’s argument for introducing backdoors into consumer devices so authorities can more readily access their contents.
You can read the entire story at http://bit.ly/2JJygfg.
Until Apple fixes the problem, you might think about purchasing an Android phone. However, I suspect Apple with have a fix in the form of a software update within a few months. Until then, you might want to install the encrypted phone call, video calls, and text messaging app Signal. It is available free of charge. Signal is available for both iPhones and Android phones. See https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aprivacyblog.com+Signal&t=hg&ia=web for my earlier articles about Signal.
The biggest drawback of Signal is that both cell phones have to have Signal installed and running in order to take advantage of private communications.
- Russia Blocks 500+ IPs & Domains, Fails to Shutdown the Encrypted Zello Voice Chat App
- Russian Court Blocks Popular Messaging App Telegram in Still Another Privacy Row
Categories: Cell Phones
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Privacy Blog 