Ever since the release of the first mobile phone, people have been using phones on the go. For, yes, calling. Ever since WWII, phones have been on the rise. Back then, phones were just radios, which used radio frequencies for two-way communication.
But, let’s fast forward to 2007: the introduction of Apple’s iPhone. Internet browsing, music devices, e-mailing, calling and texting already existed, but were differentiated between devices. A point-and-shoot camera was used for photos, the computer was used for e-mailing and browsing and an MP3 player was used for listening to music.
Apple changed the phone industry with the introduction of the iPhone (Frommer, 2011), and smartphones can’t be excluded from our way of living ever since. Is it weird to call your smartphone an extension of yourself? Not really. Do you remember everything that’s on your smartphone? Probably not. Remember that awkward photo? Your phone does. Remember your password to a website you once visited and now need to visit again? Your phone does. Remember that WhatsApp conversation you had, 24th of March 2014? Your phone does.
Since our phones know everything of us, we can basically call it an extra brain you just carry in your pocket. How scared should we be that basically, this is accessible to anyone? Anyone who has your passcode can basically enter a part of your brain, so to speak. This is why security is so important. Because of technology, the line between privacy and (“so called”) protection from our government becomes thinner, and thinner, and thinner.
The U.S. Government already wants smartphone manufacturers to build a special back-door into their operating systems, under the All Writs act. Isn’t the U.S. basically asking for a back-door into our brain? The reason behind this are centuries old laws, laws that have existed before technology existed.
As we know: the only thing we know for sure about governments is the fact that they cannot be trusted. Will we be the generation that makes technology uncrackable so governments cannot do anything? Or are we all willingly handing information to our government? What do you think?
http://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/about/company-overview/history/timeline.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-android-smartphones-2011-6
http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/answers/
https://www.eff.org/cases/re-order-apple-all-writs
Photo: Amongtech.com
Hi Gaston, thank you for your post! This topic has been a debate for a long time, as there is no direct solution. A question often asked is: how many privacy are you willing to give up in exchange for security? If the government knows everything people do on their phone, they argue that it is easier for example to find terrorists. But as they didn’t manage to stop them before, who gives us the guarantee that they will be able to stop them later? Isn’t having privacy also part of security? I think the privacy / security debate is a very interesting, but difficult debate. There are valid arguments for both sides, which makes the debate even more difficult.
I think we will not be the generation that makes technology so uncrackable that governments cannot do anything. I think governments will continue to try to enforce their power, at the expense of our privacy. But who knows, maybe we will make something that governments can’t crack – only time will tell.
Hello Gaston, Thanks for your blog-post, it really attracted my attention.
As you mention governments, which are more or less for certain spying on our private data stored on our smartphones, I was thinking about if I really care about the government spying on me or if this is, in some sort of way, better than criminals who are trying to hack my phone and if it is really possible to make my data on my smartphone safe from hackers.
First of all, for sure I don’t appreciate anyone spying on my phone and analysing my personal data, but compared to criminals governments are the lesser of the two evils, because at least they are trying or pretending to spy on us to protect us. So I think if a government would spy on humans, because of security reasons and not just because they want to gather as much data as they can, I would be to some extent fine with it.
But anyhow everybody of us has something to hide and even if it is just an embarrassing photo a friend sent to you 3 month ago. Therefore I am strong promoter of encryption technologies to safe our private data. There are two main reasons why encrypting data became more and more popular the last years.
Firstly, when we take a look at the last years more and more people became aware of the fact that our smartphones are highly vulnerable and that governments or criminals have a huge incentive to spy on us to know about every single detail of our lives. This trend was also recognized by companies specialized on encryption technologies. These companies tried to develop easy to use interfaces to enable people to use encryption and for this reason the availability of encryption increased dramatically.
But does it really stop governments with high performance computer centers to break into our phones? The answer is yes. To illustrate this, consider a 128-bit key which wants to be cracked by for example the NSA. The NSA would need to 339,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible key combinations to break into your system. This in return would take them millions of years and I don’t think they have the time and the mood to do this.
In conclusion, considering the availability and easiness of installing encryption, I think everybody should encrypt his/her data on the smartphone or smartphone OS providers should integrate technologies to encrypt the data automatically.
References:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encryption-care/