The newest iPhone is pretty hard to crack, and various law enforcement agencies aren’t very happy. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have a brand-new and more powerful encryption setting that will make it a lot harder for various law enforcement and surveillance agencies (like the NSA and FBI) from accessing the contacts, photos, and emails of users. At a news conference on Thursday, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, criticized the tech giant’s encryption which could take “more than five-and-a-half years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” He went on to accuse Apple of creating a way for criminals to get away with illegal behavior; for example, in kidnapping cases where content on a phone could help find a victim. A senior FBI official told the Times that terrorists could also take advantage of the encryption and evade law enforcement.
Major tech companies, though, like Google and Apple say that they can’t do business if customers think their data is insecure, especially in foreign countries like Europe and China where it’s commonly believed that American technology products might come pre-installed with methods for American surveillance agencies to have access to their data.
