[mikeash]

How about encasing something in 20ft of reinforced concrete and then sinking it to the bottom of the ocean?

Strong encryption may be tougher to break but I disagree that it's entirely different. It's merely a quantitative difference. It's a standard principle that the police can break into whatever they can if they have a warrant, but they can't force you to make things easy for them ahead of time.

[csandreasen]

You can keep coming up with analogies that are increasingly more difficult for the cops to get into, but ultimately it's just an exercise in sophistry. Only when people begin commonly storing their belongings inside 20ft of reinforced concrete at the bottom of the ocean will it become analogous to seeking a warrant to gain access to their phone.

[mikeash]

Even so, there's nothing that says we have to make it easy, or even possible, for police to execute a warrant against us.

[pdkl95]

Law enforcement (and the powers it necessarily must be granted) is intended to be harder. That's the whole point of the various requirements and procedures that make up "due process". Yes, we could catch more criminals a lot faster if we relaxed those requirements, but history shows that always increases the error rate.

If the situation has changed and there are legitimate law enforcement needs that simply didn't exist in the past, then they should request a change to the social contract through legitimate channels and propose the necessary amendment to the constitution. Law enforcement's failure to even try going through proper channels speaks loudly to how little they actually respect the law.

[csandreasen]

> Law enforcement's failure to even try going through proper channels speaks loudly to how little they actually respect the law.

Why do you say they aren't going through the proper channels? Law enforcement officials have just as much right to make their viewpoints heard through the press as you and I have. If they feel the need to seek new legislation, they would need to make the argument in advance in order to gain support any bills being proposed. Unless the Supreme Court thinks otherwise, I doubt a constitutional amendment would be necessary, but that depends largely on what was being proposed. I haven't seen any evidence that any law enforcement official is disrespecting any law with regards to this issue.

[pdkl95]

Parallel construction is one huge disrespect for the law; it hides the real accusation and necessarily requires hiding evidence from the defendant. It is a blatant attempt to bypass the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine and the 4th amendment. There are probably other legal problems too, depending on the specifics of the case.

I'm not really suggesting that an amendment is (or should be) necessary, because the surveillance that is going on (and being passed down[1] from the NSA to the FBI, DEA, and local departments). These activities should not be necessary at all for law enforcement, as the warrant system is easily sufficient to allow any necessary searches. Even if a specific device such as cell phone is inaccessible (despite having a valid warrant), that doesn't stop any policeman from conducting traditional (in person) surveillance or upstream wiretaps.

Yet police insist they need far broader access and we have numerous examples of the 4th Amendment warrant requirements being ignored[2]. IFF their claims have merit, the proper way to get exceptions to needing warrants would be an amendment, which has not been suggested. There could be some edge cases where "merely" a circuit court or SCOTUS ruling could "find" additional powers for police, but it doesn't matter - I don't see the the various TLAs trying to setup a test case on this matter, either. Instead we see many cases where law enforcement (and/or people in Obama's administration) have tried to prevent lawsuits from going forward.

[1] [pdf] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1011... Some of the training slides and request forms. Especially interesting is how often they repeat the need to keep the practice secret, including having a 24-hour hotline local police can use to get advice on how to hide the source even if they have to immediately give testimony in court. I believe (and a friend of mine who is a lawyer agrees) that these repeated statements like "To use it, we must protect it, or lose it." easily counts as mens rea.

[2] Riley v. California being a notable exception, though I know at least two friends that had their phones searched (in their presence) just a couple weeks ago in Oakland, CA; some departments haven't gotten the message yet, unfortunately.

[csandreasen]

Two points with regards to that: 1) Parallel construction has nothing to do with the iPhone encryption issue. 2) People tend to overlook a few key points from the original Reuters article[1] that introduced the concept of parallel construction:

(emphasis mine)

"...Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE. ...

...Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst."

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE....