Liberty Minute October 1 2014

Reacting to consumer concerns about privacy, Apple and Google have enhanced the security features on their cell phones. The new privacy protections will make it difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement officials to have access to data stored on the phones without the owner?s consent.

This welcome innovation follows a recent unanimous Supreme Court ruling that police must have warrants before they can search cell phones or similar devices.

All of this is firmly in the best traditions of American capitalism and due process: The public has understandably become concerned about pervasive warrantless eavesdropping by government agencies, and two of the biggest companies have responded to market demand.

Speaking from a perspective more appropriate to totalitarian East Germany, FBI Director James Comey has denounced Apple and Google for serving their customers, rather than the government that seeks to regiment their lives. People who buy the new phones, protests Commissar Comey, might place themselves ?beyond the law? ? by which expression be presumably means beyond the reach of illegal scrutiny by lawless agencies like the one over which he presides.

Comey says he is consulting with the companies in order to straighten out their thinking, a gesture that displays a genuinely totalitarian mindset.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.