Is Encrypting Phones OK?

A very good post by Tim Bray that totally violates Betteridge’s law of headlines.

Point 2 is especially good:

Those of us who live in civ­i­lized democ­ra­cies might be sort of OK with a set­up where an of­fi­cial can get a war­rant to open up a phone. Ex­cept for a huge pro­por­tion of Ho­mo sapi­ens don’t; they’re in places where the gov­ern­ment is some combi­na­tion of cor­rup­t, au­to­crat­ic, and para­noid.

Is it sane to ask Ap­ple, Google, and friends to make judg­ment calls on which gov­ern­ments get ac­cess to the “Golden Key”? I’m sure the gov­ern­ments they turn down will be just fine with that, and would nev­er con­sid­er lock­ing up lo­cal Ap­ple em­ploy­ees to ap­ply pres­sure.

Go ahead, encrypt your phone…