There is a constant battle, a tug-of-war if you will between the right of Americans to live free and to live secure. We would hope we could have both but the tension will not allow it to be so.
Right now the government wants to know more about the San Bernardino shooters, they want to know whom they knew and how they gained access to the weapons they used.
The government wants to get the information on their iPhones but there is a problem, Apple has created a really great security system to foil attempts to hack the phone if it does not belong to you.
So, the US government would like Apple to create a “backdoor” into its iPhone software to let them not only get into a terrorist’s phone but any iPhone that it deems a need to do so, but Apple has refused. Game on.
When it comes to the war on terror and law and order in general the ability of the federal government to backdoor into someone’s smart phone seems like a no brainer, after all if you are not breaking the law then you should have nothing to hide, remember this is for security.
On the other hand we have liberty and freedom. Freedom from illegal search and seizure and the freedom to make the government get a warrant for each and every person they want to search.
Liberty comes from the Lord and we understand that a government even with the best intentions continues to expand its powers until it control by those without the best of intentions and then it is too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
We have already given the government way too much power as the courts have expanded the right to take property when the government needs it or a government agency can take children from their parents without a fair hearing first. The last thing we need is to have our data security taken away by giving the government a master key to every electronic device we own. After all, it would only take a few bad apples, excuse the pun, to sell copies of these keys to bad people and then more than celebrity naked photos would be freely available.
Look, I believe we should give law enforcement the tools they need to do their jobs but I don’t want to make it too easy. Instead of creating a backdoor into every system they should do some old fashioned detective work to figure out the password used by these shooters, I can tell you that most people are not that cleaver when making pin numbers and passwords.
The most common pins are birth dates and still the number one password for systems that do not require more complex ones is, wait for it, password.
