The Founding Fathers included a ban on unreasonable searches in the The Fourth Amendment. Until recently, this was interpreted to mean that police are able to search a person for incriminating evidence at the time of an arrest. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that because of the vast amount of information that people carry on their cell phones, searching a cell phone is no longer considered a reasonable search.
In the ruling, the court pointed out that it is still possible to search a phone after obtaining a warrant. A few months later, the ruling was made seemingly moot with the announcements of new versions of Apple’s and Google’s phone operating systems that encrypt all user data so that it can not be accessed by police, even with a warrant. Law enforcement decried this development as limiting their ability to convict criminals and digital rights groups praised the additional protections to digital identities.
Details
Please read the above linked articles and write an essay that answers the question, is it ethical for cell phone companies to encrypt all user data to protect users from identity theft if it also protects pedophiles, drug dealers, and gang members from prosecution. Please include citations to the above articles and any other resources that you use to help answer the question.
Submission
Your work will be graded according to the course essay rubric. Submit your essay as a text document on the course Inquire site before class on Thursday December 10th.