[NewsPoster]

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance continues his tirade against phone encryption with no backdoors yesterday. Speaking at a legal summit, the official decried Silicon Valley's choice to "engineer themselves out of criminal investigations" and noted that just in New York City, there were 270 phones that investigators sought to penetrate.

At the Bloomberg legal meeting, Vance said that "In my office alone, we now have 270 lawfully-seized iPhones running iOS 8 or 9 that are completely inaccessible. These devices represent hundreds of real crimes… that cannot be fully investigated, including cases of homicide, child sex abuse, human trafficking, assault, robbery, and yes-cybercrime and identity theft." Vance's current claim of 270 devices in New York City is up from February's claim of 175.

The district attorney continues to argue that Congress needs to pass a bill making data decryption of consumer devices a mandatory requirement. Such a move would save law enforcement and the courts considerable time, saving each would-be data encryption case, such as the case in San Bernardino, having to work its way through courts on a case-by-case basis. "We now live in a world where we are not getting all the facts," Vance told a Washington audience at the Council of Foreign relations in May. "Many of the facts are on smartphones, because criminals, just like you and me, have moved off paper and onto digital devices."

Vance also claimed that Google and Apple have failed to prove their point why phone manufacturers developing a back door through the device encryption will weaken security. He said that the pair have failed to convince him, as the arguments offered the evidence prevented needs to be "backed up by data not rhetoric."

Cyrus Vance was one of the proponents of the "Secure our Smartphones" movement, which mandated kill switches and secure locks for stolen devices. Strong device encryption and security is an underpinning of the program, which has led to fewer incidents of "Apple picking" in New York City, and elsewhere, according to the advocacy group.

[prl99]

This is why legislators and lawyers need to take an IQ test as well as a basic computer fundamentals course before they are allowed to serve on any committee or make any statement about anything related to computers. These people just don't understand anything technical. I would say it's because most of them are old men but even the younger ones are making the same stupid comments without any understanding on how things work.

As for Vance wanting Apple to prove why a back door would weaken security, I could only shake my head and chuckle. Why is this person given any authority to do anything at all? All he has to do is ask his menial IT support staff and they'll give his a quick answer--it's to protect all his data from being hacked.

It's also interesting that all 270 of the phones are iPhones. I assume this means they have no problem breaking into Android and Windows based phones.

[DiabloConQueso]

What a buffoonish question. Why does it weaken security? For the same reason removing locks from your doors weakens security.

If you put a backdoor on your house labeled "Cops only," do you think that prevents anyone that's not a cop from using that door?

[zehspoon1]

This guy is smart enough to know what his proposed legislation does.

It is ***EXACTLY*** why he wants it.

I would have more respect for him if he said "We want unfettered access to your devices for any reason we want."

I suspect he comes from the "If you don't have something to hide then why worry?" camp.