Encryption is a bad thing as long as NSA can't get its hands on people's personal data without a warrant

Nov 7, 2014 10:31 GMT  ·  By

Joining in the wave of law-enforcement related personalities slamming Google and Apple for offering users a way to encrypt their phone data is an ex-NSA lawyer who believes BlackBerry’s downfall is strongly related to the strong encryption it had around its product. Furthermore, Google and Apple are next.

Stewart Baker, former NSA lawyer and assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, made some mindboggling statements during the Dublin Web Summit. He suggested that BlackBerry, formerly known as RIM, put off customers by implementing powerful data encryption in the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, The Register reports.

It seems like Baker is of the opinion that the encryption powers within BlackBerry’s tools had restricted the company’s own ability to sell. By encrypting people’s data by default, Google and Apple risk falling in the same spiral.

“BlackBerry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now – that has not ended well for BlackBerry,” Baker said.

The comments come after the FBI chief, as well as other law enforcement names, have criticized the two companies for stepping up and adding encryption layers over people’s data. They’ve claimed that this would stop the police from doing its work because companies would no longer hold people’s data, since the encryption keys would all be on the customers’ phones. Others have brought up the topic of the police not being able to properly respond in cases of child abduction since phone data is essential to such investigations.

On the other hand, Edward Snowden has argued that the police can continue getting its hands on people’s phones, including their keys, with a simple warrant. Furthermore, newspapers have investigated the incidents that the officials brought up and noticed that phone data didn’t lead to the solving of those particular cases.

Encryption won't drive buyers away, but will lure them in

Furthermore, saying that the encryption options have led to the downfall of BlackBerry is pretty far-fetched. In fact, there are a lot of reasons that can be listed instead, such as the quality of the phones it launched years ago.

On top of this, the situation is much different now than it was years ago. Supposing that Baker is right and encryption had some kind of role in the rollercoaster ride BlackBerry is in, the NSA’s overreach wasn’t known back then.

Nowadays, in the post-Snowden era, when the world knows how important encrypting their personal data is to keep it away from not only hackers but Big Brother as well, people are that much more inclined to purchase a phone that will offer them a lot more protection, just like they’d rather use email and messaging services providing end-to-end encryption and so on.