In the past week, US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned that encryption made it almost impossible to find criminals and terrorists and that iPhones will become the “device of choice” for terrorists. Furthermore, the UK’s leading counter-terrorism official said tech companies are creating systems that are “friendly to terrorists.”

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are cracking up for the reason that they will no longer as easily be able to seize your data with or without a warrant.

Since last year, Silicon Valley technology giants such as Google, Apple, Yahoo and others have increased datacenter connectivity security and enacting end-to-end email encryption.



Apple took a greatest step forward by encrypting its devices in such a way the government could no longer ask it for data. Google has currently included this option to its own Nexus-branded devices.

The executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt said at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday the responses were “proof” that its efforts to lock out the government are working.

Schmidt himself noted at the event that “Companies are required to follow the letter of the law.” That means whenever they are compelled to hand over data, they must adhere to the law. But the drive to “encrypt all the things” means they can’t hand over anything because the users themselves have the decryption keys.

These tech companies have little option but to toughen the hatches and lock the government out, as far as when they are pressurized to drop encryption making everyone more vulnerable to hackers and state-sponsored attackers.

However the wistful reality is that people cannot trust the government to put privacy first over its surveillance operations. Instead they will be trusting Silicon Valley giant to look out for them.

