Smartphone encryption – What does it mean to you?

Why are legislators considering going to congress for access to our cell phones? What has changed recently to motivate these demands for legislative changes? 

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, passed in 1994, gave access to our voice communications to wiretap our phone  to members of the law enforcement community.  This law required all telephone service providers to make it possible for law enforcement to wiretap phones.

The law did not anticipate any of the new technology which is now commonplace. The access is still permissible, but now the data and metadata which used to be accessible are garbled.

The two main cellular operating system (OS) vendors, Apple and Google with their respective iOS and Android operating systems, have recently implemented new security protocols for data storage, which automatically encrypt the information stored on the mobile devices which use these OSs. Both Apple and Google use very sophisticated encryption algorithms, which can take years of processing power to decrypt a single device. Further, neither vendor built a “back door” for access without the user password into their device.

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