Last week, Apple announced that it is closing a serious security vulnerability in
the iPhone. It used to be that the phone's encryption only protected a small
amount of the data, and Apple had the ability to bypass security on the rest of
it.
From now on, all the phone's data is protected. It can no longer be
accessed by criminals, governments, or rogue employees. Access to it can no
longer be demanded by totalitarian governments. A user's iPhone data is now more secure.
To hear US law enforcement respond, you'd think Apple's move
heralded an unstoppable crime wave. See, the FBI had been using that
vulnerability to get into people's iPhones. In the words of cyberlaw professor Orin Kerr, "How
is the public interest served by a policy that only thwarts lawful search
warrants?"
Ah, but that's the thing: You can't build a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through.
Encryption protects against cybercriminals, industrial competitors, the Chinese
secret police and the FBI. You're either vulnerable to eavesdropping by any of
them, or you're secure from eavesdropping from all of them.
