In the aftermath of the push back from the Snowden revelations American tech companies are feeling the heat about suspicions they are a bit too cooperative with the NSA and various law enforcement agencies. Now they are endeavoring to put a little distance between themselves and the government.
One way they’re doing that is by serving notice that unless prohibited by a warrant they will notify targets that the government is seeking their information. Yahoo did this some time ago and Apple just posted their new guidelines for law enforcement agencies.
The Apple guidelines are worth reading just to see what information Apple says it can extract from its devices. Significantly, they say that they can not provide any FaceTime or iMessage data because those communications are encrypted end-to-end.
In a way you almost have to feel sorry for the law enforcement agencies. No one wants to make it more difficult to stop real criminals but they brought this problem on themselves. For years they’ve abused tools like administrative subpoenas and along with the NSA have tried to vacuum up as much information as possible. Now they’re whining and issuing dire warning about the four horsemen of the infopocalypse. It’s the same nonsense they always use: Terrorists! Think of the children! I think I’d rather think of the constitution.
In any event, this is good news and, I hope, the harbinger of more push back to come. It will be interesting to see what happens next.