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Obama at SXSW speaking on encryption (Apple vs FBI)

"If it's technologically possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where encryption is so strong that there's no key—there's no door—then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? What mechanisms do we have to even do things like tax enforcement? If you can't crack that at all, if government can't get in, then everyone's walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket, right?"


To me this sounds dangerously close to justifying 'any means necessary' to defeat terrorism because the means work, not because they're moral. Chemical and biological weapons work; we don't use them. There should be limits, even if it ties our hands in enforcing the law or fighting enemies. (And I say this as someone who scoffs at the statement, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail.")


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