Encryption and the feds

I see that the federal law enforcement agencies are quite perturbed about the new default encryption appearing in Apple's new iPhones and Google's Android phones, which will make it much harder, perhaps even impossible, to listen in on everyone's phone calls and e-mails. It will, they say, seriously impede the tracking of drug dealers, pedophiles, terrorists and other criminals. And no doubt they are right. Such measures have already been shown to be very effective in other systems - we call those systems "police states" - like Russia and North Korea.

Most of us already appear many times a day on surveillance cameras in big stores and on street corners in many towns. Our auto license plates are read and tracked automatically in many jurisdictions. The NSA already sweeps up all our phone calls, and perhaps most of our web visits and emails as well. Our credit card transactions can be tracked, as well as our air travel. No doubt a police-linked surveillance camera in every bedroom would further help the police deal with rapes and domestic violence, but do we really want to go that far?

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies always want more, and more intrusive, powers - of course it makes their job easier. It also makes abuses of power easier, and the history of federal agency abuses, from the Nixon years to the Obama administration's IRS scandal, ought to alert us to the dangers to our freedom and privacy that this constant federal overreach offers.

The feds are annoyed about the encryption. My response is "tough - get used to it". This is supposed to be the land of the free - if the feds can listen in to every telephone call I make and and every email I send, we are hardly free.