FBI CANNOT ACCESS CONFISCATED SMARTPHONES DUE TO ENCRYPTION

It used to be easy for the FBI to access mobile devices, especially back in the days of flip phones, but the modern world is much more security conscious.

According to newly minted FBI director, Christopher Wray, the agency has failed to access more than half of the devices it's confiscated in the last year. That is nearly 7,000 smartphones sitting in evidence that cannot be unlocked because of encryption. Wray says it is a "huge, huge problem", and it's not going away anytime soon. 

Back in 2015, the FBI's investigation of the San Bernardino shooting, a gunman left behind an encrypted iPhone 5c. The FBI tried to force Apple to unlock the device but eventually had to pay an unnamed third-party security firm $900,000 for a tool that could bypass the phone's protection. 

Ever since then the FBI has been making more noise about encryption. Former FBI director, James Comey, who was in charge during the San Bernardino investigation, asked Congress to revise the Communications Assistant for Law Enforcement Act to force companies to help the FBI unlock encrypted devices. 

If you look at it from the FBI's perspective, it is easy to see why this keeps coming up. Android and iOS – which make up virtually all mobile devices – both default to using encryption storage, and they prompt users to set up secure lock methods like PIMs, patterns and fingerprints. 

The "huge, huge problem" for the FBI is only going to get bigger. It is increasingly rare to come across a smartphone that has no secure lock method, even cheap $100 phones have fingerprint sensors that make it fast and easy to secure data. 

The FBI has recently been pushing the idea of "reasonable encryption" as opposed to asking for a backdoor, but so-called "reasonable" encryption is a contradiction in terms. The only reasonable encryption is encryption that keeps people from accessing a device unless they have permission to do so. Weakening encryption by either making it trivial to break or creating hardwired backdoors always weakens the final product. 

The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other government organizations undoubtedly have some incredibly talented people working for them, but so do countries like Russia and China. It's ridiculous to assume that American cryptographic standards are so secure they cannot be broken, or that encoding backdoors into products wouldn’t weaken their security.

Let us know what you think about the FBI wanting to crack encrypted smartphones in the comments below: