Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Freedom, Security, and the iPhone
Freedom, Security, and the iPhone
Apr 26, 2025 12:30 AM

Writing on September 22 in the Wall Street Journal, Devlin Barret and Danny Yadron reported,

Last week, Apple announced that its new operating system for phones would prevent law enforcement from retrieving data stored on a locked phone, such as photos, videos and contacts. A day later, Google reiterated that the next version of its Android mobile-operating system this fall would make it similarly difficult for police or Google to extract such data from suspects’ phones.

It’s not just a feature — it’s also a marketing pitch. “It’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data,” Apple’s website says.

This would not protect all data, however:

Apple acknowledged it could still hand such data over to law enforcement that users back up on pany’s iCloud servers. And police can access some iPhone data without Apple’s help, because phone firms keep call logs and Apple doesn’t control data from third-party apps.

The FBI has not taken this news well, in more ways than one. Amy Schatz reports for re/code,

New encryption technologies on smartphones will make it harder for law enforcement to solve crimes or stop terrorists, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said Thursday in a speech panies including Google and Apple to reverse course.

“The FBI has a sworn duty to keep every American safe from crime and terrorism, and technology has e the tool of choice for some very dangerous people,” Comey said Thursday during a speech at a Washington think tank. Federal and local law enforcement “aren’t always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism. We have the legal authority to intercept and munications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so.”

Comey didn’t just ask Apple and Google to reverse their decision to bake tougher encryption technologies into the iPhone and Android operating systems. He also saidit’s time to update existing lawsto allow for federal wiretapping over a broader set of newer Internet-based technologies.

panies are run by good people, responding to what they perceive is a market demand. But the place they are leading us is one we shouldn’t go to without careful thought and debate,” Comey said.

Comey had a lot to say against this (admittedly limited) encryption from Google and Apple. Schatz goes on to report,

“We are struggling to keep up with changing technology, and to maintain our ability to actually collect munications we are authorized to intercept,” Comey said. “And if the challenges of real-time interception threaten to leave us in the dark, encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place.”

The move by Apple and Google to build tighter encryption standards into their devices stems from continued frustration about Washington’s inaction to address revelations about mass surveillance by the National Security Agency revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.

Comey said that Americans are wrong to think that the “government is sweeping up all of munications” because “that’s not true.”

“Perhaps it’s time to suggest that the post-Snowden pendulum has swung too far in one direction — in a direction of fear and mistrust,” Comey said. “It is time to have open and honest debates about liberty and security.”

Some readers might balk at this last pairing of “liberty and security,” since action in the name of security so often seems, including in this case, e at the expense of individual liberty.

This is a concern I share, but in the interest of charity, and to prevent the “post-Snowden pendulum” from swinging too far in the other direction, it seems worthwhile to note the pairing of liberty and security or safety in some of our founding documents.

For example, the Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776):

That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights, amongst which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

The preamble even states, “all government ought to be instituted and supported for the security and protection of munity as such.” The Constitution of Vermont (1777) uses exactly the same words in its preamble as well.

These are just two examples of the pairing of liberty and security in founding documents of the United States. So Comey’s concern may, in fact, be in line with the founders of our free societies. That said, even in the best light, isn’t he — for lack of a better expression — doing it wrong?

If his first concern is security, is it wise to publicly say that the FBI is “struggling to keep up with changing technology”? Honestly, whether someone agrees or disagrees that the new encryption methods are a serious threat to national security, isn’t the FBI director’s implication that they are now at the mercy of Google and Apple and may even before now have been failing at their job? Aren’t statements like that just as much, if not more so, a threat to national security?

The right way to do it is — whatever the reality — to pretend to be unphased by these recent announcements, as if whatever Apple and Google e up with couldn’t possibly be a match for the FBI. Brush the news aside like a pesky insect, unconcerned whether it may be carrying malaria. It’s as bad a gaffe as the president saying we don’t yet have a strategy to counter ISIS three months after the latter had conquered half of Syria and Iraq. It shouldn’t be so hard for a government official to lie! If ever there was a right time to do it, these are those times. We even have such a thing as classified information because in certain rare cases, for the sake of national security, it is better not to be “open and honest.”

This reminds me of the recent interview in Religion & Liberty with Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran Vietnam journalist and Lutheran theologian, who said,

In Vietnam, the U.S. has shown that when it gets tired or bored with a conflict, it will get out, using any oblique means to do so. Look at Afghanistan: The U.S. and NATO are behaving like a house owner leaving a note on his front door saying, “We are on vacation and won’t be back until Oct. 10. The code for our alarm system is 021133, and we are taking the dog with us.” This is demented. No thought is given to what will happen to Afghan women after our soldiers are gone.

With regards to the security necessary for “enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety,” our leaders seem to have blinders on regarding the unintended consequences of their statements and actions. Sometimes prudence requires knowing not only what to say, but when not to speak at all.

Lastly, while Comey may wish to sweep away such concerns for privacy as a mere “market demand,” that just obscures the fact that market demand is really another way of saying popular will. It is simply the economic dimension of it. The will of the people in this instance is for the FBI and others to protect their security without having access to look through every selfie on their iPhones.

That shouldn’t be too tall of a task for the FBI, should it?

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved