In a rather bold move, Apple has published a Privacy page that talks more about the security measures in iOS 8 that prevent Apple from bypassing your security and accessing your data. Of course, if Apple can’t access your data, then there’s no way for them to provide it in response to a government warrant. Not one to be left out, Google has also talked about their security and encryption methods in Android that will keep data safe.

During certain criminal investigations, government agencies will try to access data from smartphones to help them learn more about the case, and if they’re not going to be able to do that effectively thanks to these safety measures, then the argument is that it’s going to make it harder to solve crimes and criminals will be even more bold with their use of technology.

Only last week the news spread about the largest SIM card maker in the world being impacted by a major security breach. Nothing unusual, except Gemalto’s system seems to have been compromised by both NSA and GCHQ in the aim of storing the encryption keys that protect SIM cards. “Once successful, the program would have allowed intelligence agencies to decrypt cell phone signals in mid-air or implant malware remotely into any phone with a Gemalto SIM card” according to The Verge.

For many people, this topic presents an interesting conundrum. As much as the public may want privacy, a lot of the people that you ask would likely say that the government should be able to access certain data from a smartphone when necessary in order to solve a case. In other words, they don’t want the government to have access to everything so that they can pick and choose what they want to see, but they do think that technology can hold the key to solving certain crimes and should be used when appropriate.

What do you think? 

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