[e-gadfly]

What would be interesting is for Apple or Google to one-up the Feds and make it not only encrypt by default, but to also wipe by default if a “wipe” password is used. In other words, you’d have two passwords. The one you use when you want to use your phone, and one to give to the government when it is prying into your life.

Any competent investigator is going to start by copying the encrypted data and working on the copy, in order to overcome that tactic.

[roadcat]

Any competent investigator is going to start by copying the encrypted data and working on the copy, in order to overcome that tactic.

I remember the early days of floppy discs on personal computers. People were pirating software by making copies. So creators were hiding sectors of data on hidden tracks not normally accessible by regular copy software. Can't do that with digital storage media where there are no tracks. Now one method is to bury data within other data, so when decrypted it looks ordinary; but the private stuff is hidden within the ordinary data with a second level of encryption.

[Swordmaker]

Any competent investigator is going to start by copying the encrypted data and working on the copy, in order to overcome that tactic.

But you have to have the passcode to gain access TO even copy the data from the device. . . otherwise ZAP. Apple has entangled the passcode with a hardware generated hash available only on and unique to each device. . . Good luck with that approach.

[zeugma]

Any competent investigator is going to start by copying the encrypted data and working on the copy, in order to overcome that tactic.

Probably. There's a lot of incompetence in government though. Perhaps some folks might get lucky and have the criminal incompetence of the average governemnt worker work for them for a change.