> and all the kids we can’t put into a position of safety
"For the children!" They can't think of a good reason to have access to all these phones so they blantantly use an idiom so tired that it's practically a joke.
"For the children!" They can't think of a good reason to have access to all these phones so they blantantly use an idiom so tired that it's practically a joke.
> “If we go back to the situation where we again don’t have access, now we know directly all the evidence we’ve lost and all the kids we can’t put into a position of safety,” said Chuck Cohen, who leads an Indiana State Police task force on internet crimes against children.
There are two type of child abuse imagery: the new and original stuff that points to a kid currently being abused, the one can can be rescued, and the enormous mass of old material that forensic investigators have seen literally thousands of time before. Actual new abuse material that could lead to the rescue of a child is thankfully very rare. While these phones could lead to arrests, the likelihood of them leading to the rescue of a child is negligible.
Once upon a time the bulk of images on phones were originals taken by the phone. Now "phones" are really just internet machines and the images they are looking for are essentially browsing history and stuff saved from online sources.
I think you're ignoring some aspects of how the US criminal justice system works. Arresting a child abuser is one thing; they have to be tried in court and found guilty by a jury/judge. Criminal cases especially have a high requirements to prove guilt since they are very serious charges. So even if unlocking the phones may not help save actual children from abuse, I think what the guy means is that you can get more convictions for these child abusers who have been arrested and prevent future children from being abused.
Note that I'm not stating an opinion about the ethics of reducing security of phones, only pointing out what the person meant when he said that doing so prevents child abuse.
The technology to create digital images and videos has gotten cheaper. Securely transmitting and storing media, and securely communicats regarding it has become more accessible too.
I'm not advocating for or against iphone unlocks (or the generic abstract backdoor), but I think it is dangerous to think that serious crimes of this nature are extremely rare, or somehow far less common than they were in the past.
On the flipside, if you are right - and identifying material that saves children from this kind of crime is indeed a rare event - then isn't a possible reason the ready encryption of such devices? Food for thought.