“Won’t somebody please think of the children?!”
This is the infamous catchphrase of Helen Lovejoy, town gossip and busybody wife of Reverend Tim Lovejoy on The Simpsons.
It was most famously used in an episode in which Springfield’s population was up in arms about taxes and a non-issue concerning illegal immigration, but has come up time and again to justify one moral panic or another.
But as is sometimes the case, life imitates art.
“It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy.
“When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so.”
Those are the words of the Obama administration’s long-time ally Attorney General Eric Holder, who spoke in front of the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online last week. He was suggesting that Apple, with its new iPhone 6, and Google, with its upcoming Android L operating system, are helping facilitate the behavior of pedophiles because devices offered by the tech giants will now feature data encryption by default. The companies claim that no one, not even themselves, will be able to unlock the devices against the wishes of users.
Consumers and advocates for privacy love it. The nation’s top law enforcement isn’t having it.
James Comey, current director of the FBI added:
“What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.”
Much like law enforcement places themselves beyond the law when their tactics go against the Fourth Amendment?
Attack of the Straw Man
The cynic in me says that Attorney General Holder was simply using his time in front of the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online as a platform to justify expanding surveillance we’ve been seeing in this country. It seems as though many law enforcement officials would rather take whatever action they see fit without being held accountable, and instead tell us it’s for our own good or “for the children,” in this case.
It seems as though people being given the tools to protect their privacy is acting as a roadblock in the path-of-least-resistance form of law enforcement that’s all the rage these days.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find some satisfaction in the knowledge that Holder and his ilk were wringing their hands over the fact that tech giants are increasingly going against the wishes of law enforcement. They’re doing it ostensibly in an attempt to repair and safeguard their reputations (and profits) in this post-Edward Snowden world, but the fact that it’s happening at all is good enough. The conversation has started.
I have no doubt that Holder, his upcoming successor, and other champions of the surveillance state will continue invoking child safety, the specter of terror, and whatever other bogeymen they can to justify increasingly invasive policies. But they set the wheels in motion when they decided to abuse the system for their own gain and forced the collective hand of the people they’re supposed to protect.
Yes, people with less-than-noble intentions will likely take advantage of privacy tools put in place, but they are a very small minority. Everyone else simply wants to live his or her life without someone looking over their shoulder or feeling as though they are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Let the tried-and-true methods of criminal investigation uncover the former, then maybe the administration will regain some modicum of trust from the latter.
Keep your eyes open,
Ryan Stancil
