Should the government be able to require a "backdoor" into our phones?

If they don't the whole discussion is moot anyway, and we are conducting billions of dollars in transactions based on illusory security.

This discussion really is, at its core, about trying to maintain their ability to maintain the keys safe and the threat is the government yet again, compelling the vendors we use to compromise our security.

Identity theft is rampant and there seems to be very little efforts being made to stop it. If unbreakable encryption is the answer, I'm all for it.

Good luck after the security companies move to countries that will not allow the US to order back doors.

Good reason to go back to home phones. Or just discontinue a phone.
Not like anyone who calls us lately is much other than a solicitor or scsmmer anyway.

Apple can go suck on something that isn't okay to print. We do have a right to privacy, and it's time these megacorporations were put on notice.

The government, as far as I'm concerned, has no business looking into the day to day activities of private citizens. This can be only used for coercion and blackmail. Even the police should have a warrant before something like that. And strictly speaking, it should be more a matter of handing over the phone.

But phones have pretty much become a broken technology as a result of scammers trying to collect data on people. And caller ID never really worked.

I seriously wonder about your values.

What happens when they decide you're a terrorist, after all the conservatives are dead?

They'll track you next. And I'll laugh from that grave.

Neither does anyone in support of such backdoors.

It's the same rationale as trying to tax "the rich". What ends up happening is that the real rich know the workarounds, so the middle-class and poor get hit instead.

Unless you stop trying to punish other people, you make life a hell for everyone around you. Including yourself.

This is what loving yourself and your neighbour means. It means protecting your own rights and not being a damned busybody.

It does not matter what the government desire as there must be millions of programmers that can write encrypted programs for both computers and phones who are bases in many nations around the world.