Are We Actually Safer By Undermining Our Own Democracy?

"As the world watched the FBI spar with Apple this winter in an attempt to hack into a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, federal officials were quietly waging a different encryption battle in a Los Angeles courtroom. 

 

There, authorities obtained a search warrant compelling the girlfriend of an alleged Armenian gang member to press her finger against an iPhone that had been seized from a Glendale home. 

The phone contained Apple's fingerprint identification system for unlocking, and prosecutors wanted access to the data inside it.

It marked a rare time that prosecutors have demanded a person provide a fingerprint to open a computer, but experts expect such cases to become more common as cracking digital security becomes a larger part of law enforcement work.

 The Glendale case and others like it are forcing courts to address a basic question: 

How far can the government go to obtain biometric markers such as fingerprints and hair?"

In more than three decades years, the FISA Court has only rejected 12 requests. 

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A secret court that oversees the US government's surveillance requests accepted every warrant that was submitted last year, according to new figures.

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The Washington DC.-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court received 1,457 requests from the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intercept phone calls and emails.

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 In long-standing fashion, the court did not reject a single warrant, entirely or in part. 

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The FBI also issued 48,642 national security letters, a subpoena-like power that compels a company to turn over data on national security grounds without informing the subject of the letter. 

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The memo said the majority of these demands sought data on foreigners, but almost one-in-five were requests for data on Americans. 

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It'll be interesting to see if the numbers go down any in 2016, since in November the court appointed five new lawyers to push back against government requests. 

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Meanwhile, a new report shows an increase in the number of government requests to Facebook about their users, more than half of which contained a non-disclosure order prohibiting Facebook from notifying those users.

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According to Pew Research Center, there's an increasingly growing fear among Americans about cyberattacks.

 In fact, it's the second most feared entity to them, the first being ISIS. The terrorist group is scary by design, relying on propaganda videos and ultra-violent attacks to spread fear and project power. 

But coming in second right after the terrorist group was the prospect of country-on-country cyberwar: a digital raid to steal another government's information, for example, or a large-scale attack on a nation's electrical grid. 

 Cyberattacks are a major threat in the minds of 72 percent of Americans, and a minor threat to another 22 percent.

 Cyberwar hasn't been on Americans' minds to this degree since 2013. 

That year, for the first time, Americans ranked cyberattacks as a top threat, placing it second after the threat from Islamic extremists like al-Qaeda. But in the intervening years, Americans turned their attention to nuclear threats.

 Police in Maryland, U.S., used controversial cellphone-tracking technology intended only for the most serious crimes to track down a man who stole $50 of chicken wings. 

Police in Annapolis -- an hour's drive from the heart of government in Washington DC -- used a StingRay cell tower simulator in an effort to find the location of a man who had earlier robbed a Pizza Boli employee of 15 chicken wings and three sandwiches.

 Total worth: $56.77. In that case, according to the police log, a court order was sought and received but in many other cases across the United States, the technology is being used with minimal oversight, despite the fact it is only supposed to be used in the most serious cases such as terrorism.

 Annapolis police never found the thief.