I find this question tough. Catching criminals is great but what about breaking encryption?

  • poVoq
    link
    fedilink
    14
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Given the (good) state of encryption it is basically never “breaking” encryption, but rather somehow circumventing it. Sadly this usually means installing some trojan on the devices exploiting a OS vulnerability.

    This is a really bad idea for two reasons:

    1. It gives law-enforcement an incentive to buy exploits and keep quiet about them afterwards and thus making devices much less secure and bugs are intentionally not fixed.

    2. Once such a trojan is installed on a device it can not only be used to search for evidence, but just as easily to plant false evidence, which is sadly not as unlikely to happen as it sounds at first.