Phone encryption is a temporary way of securing the data on a mobile device. Data can be lost or tampered with when the phone is lost, damaged or stolen. When the phone gets into the wrong hands, the data and information can be transferred and wrongly used. When a phone is encrypted, the contents and information are turned into cipher text. Anybody trying to read the information cannot read it (Ciriani, et al. 6) When the phone is returned to the owner, the same method that was used to encrypt the phone can be used for unlocking the phone so that the owner of the phone gets access to his/ her information . However, cipher text can also be unlocked with any person who can guess the key. Many smart phones nowadays can be compatible with software encryption since most of them have an operating system and can use mostly the same type of encryption used by computer companies (Ciriani, et al. 5). This paper discusses phone encryption weighing on whether the advantages or the disadvantages are a better option for a mobile phone users in the United States of America.
A Californian law maker proposed a bill that bans the sale of encrypted phones (Lai, Li, and Fan, 7). The phones will not have a security features preventing people from reading information or accessing the videos or photos in the phone. The bill requires that the mobile phones of victims and criminals are withheld by the law enforcement as evidence. Those against the bill argue that if the bill goes through, every mobile phone in the country will became vulnerable to hackers. It will become particularly dangerous if an individual has saved his bank account records and passwords. An individual can lose all his money if the hackers access the phone (Ciriani, et a.l 7). Criminals who want more privacy will then move to states that have banned mobile phone encryption. The smart phone companies are pressured not to manufacture phones that have encryptions on them. This is unconstitutional because most of the laws that prohibit phone encryption are grouped under “dormant Commerce Clause” (Lai, Li, and Fan, 9). Therefore California should not try to prevent companies such as Apple from selling encrypted phones.
There are several advantages to phone encryption (Lai, Li, and Fan, 15). First, the owner of the encrypted phone is protected from identity theft. Identity theft is a crime that involves a criminal obtaining the personal information about a person and posing as them in order to mostly get financial gain. Identity theft can occur when a phone is not encrypted. The passwords, bank account numbers, credit card pins and numbers can be obtained through a person’s phone (Ciriani, et a.l ,2). An individual can get into debt and get into trouble with the law because of identity theft.
Secondly the owner of the phone is able to keep off those he or she does not want accessing the mobile device. Those who like snooping and collecting valuable information from phones cannot access an encrypted phone. One is able to maintain his or her privacy (Lai, Li, and Fan, 12). Nobody can hack into the phone and get the information they need because the phone has been encrypted. The FBI is generally against phone encryption because of the argument that terrorist can encrypt their phones and nobody will be able to get the necessary information to get who the phone belonged to and what were the next steps that the terrorists would take ( Cipriani, et a.l,4). The FBI also believes that phone encrypting can be used by criminals to hide or burry evidence that would be used in a court of law. In California, phones that are not encrypted can be accessed freely by the law enforcement but those that are not encrypted need to be accessed by a warrant (Lai, Li, and Fan, 2). By the time the police officers get the warrant, the criminal would have erased all evidence from his phone.
Another advantage of phone encryption is that an individual can sell his or her old phone without the worry that another person will obtain the old data and information from the phone (Cipriani, et al, 10). What the seller of the phone is required to do is to dencrypt the mobile phone then reset the phone so that nobody accesses the information of the seller.
There are disadvantages to encrypting a phone. The first disadvantage is that the phone tends to become slower in processing information and data (Ciriani, et al. 12). A slow phone can make the owner spend a lot of time on one thing when the phone could have processed the information in a faster manner.
Secondly, if the owner of the phone forgets, his or her password, the information in the phone is lost. Those who have short memories should write down the passwords for their phones and keep them in a safe place to avoid somebody getting the password and accessing the phone.
Phone encryption is necessary since it saves the owner of the phone a lot of worries and protects the owner from criminals who may want to access his or her information. It, therefore, protects the privacy of the individual.
Works Cited
Cipriani, Valentina, et al. "Combining fragmentation and encryption to protect privacy in data storage." ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC) 13.3 (2010): 22.
Lai, Chengshing, Qinghua Li, and Xiaolong Fan. "[mobile phone with file encryption function and method of encrypting/decrypting file thereof]." U.S. Patent Application No. 10/709,895.
