<story><title>Irish police to be given powers over passwords</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57468750</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>choeger</author><text>Interestingly, such a law does nothing against proper criminals. People that know they have incriminating evidence will either not carry it on their phones or uses some form of steganography to hide it perfectly. In the worst case, they will have some form of wipe-me passphrase that cleans the device before unlocking.&lt;p&gt;Normal people, on the other hand, do not have these kind of (mental, time) resources. They will be forced to unlock their phones and &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; incriminating (for instance regarding &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;intellectual property rights&amp;quot; or just &amp;quot;traffic violations&amp;quot;) will be found. I consider this approach one step more in the direction of keeping every citizen an on-demand criminal. There are so many, sometimes incomprehensible, laws nowadays that pretty much everyone is not compliant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>everdrive</author><text>&amp;gt;such a law does nothing against proper criminals. People that know they have incriminating evidence will either not carry it on their phones or uses some form of steganography to hide it perfectly.&lt;p&gt;I oppose such a law, as it appears to be very poorly written, but it&amp;#x27;s pure fantasy that criminals won&amp;#x27;t do crime via their phones, or will use some sort of advanced steg. Maybe some very talented criminals will do such things, but most criminals are just people: they either don&amp;#x27;t understand technology well, or else simply engage in risky behaviors.</text></comment>
<story><title>Irish police to be given powers over passwords</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57468750</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>choeger</author><text>Interestingly, such a law does nothing against proper criminals. People that know they have incriminating evidence will either not carry it on their phones or uses some form of steganography to hide it perfectly. In the worst case, they will have some form of wipe-me passphrase that cleans the device before unlocking.&lt;p&gt;Normal people, on the other hand, do not have these kind of (mental, time) resources. They will be forced to unlock their phones and &lt;i&gt;something&lt;/i&gt; incriminating (for instance regarding &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;intellectual property rights&amp;quot; or just &amp;quot;traffic violations&amp;quot;) will be found. I consider this approach one step more in the direction of keeping every citizen an on-demand criminal. There are so many, sometimes incomprehensible, laws nowadays that pretty much everyone is not compliant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lbriner</author><text>&amp;quot;Proper criminals&amp;quot;? What does that even mean?&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds of criminals who are not tech savvy (or not tech savvy enough) who will not have any of the mechanisms you postulate, who are frequently caught by the police and are very much &amp;quot;proper criminals&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t agree with this law but to say it doesn&amp;#x27;t do anything against proper criminals is patently false.</text></comment>