Item — HN Reader

I'm not a lawyer, but here's how I think it should work:

1. DA asks court for a search warrant because a crime may have been committed.

2. If the evidence looks convincing, court issues warrant to search suspect's phone.

3. DA serves suspect with search warrant.

If the suspect won't unlock phone voluntarily, the suspect is in contempt of court and subject to legal sanctions. Why does the phone manufacturer need to get involved?

2 comments

For one thing, your scenario isn't what the government wants. The government wants to peek without the user knowing. This is the age of secret law.

For another, good security includes deniability: You can't prove a blob of random-seeming data is or isn't encrypted data, and even granting knowledge that it is, there is no way to prove there isn't more than one key to more than one set of data.

I believe it's not so much to retrieve data after they catch someone or capture a phone, but rather to be able to monitor and understand all electronic communications by making it illegal for you to use encryption.