Smartphones and Civil Rights

In Christopher Soghoian's privacy speech, he references the legal battle in the spring of 2016 between Apple and the FBI in which the latter organization tried to gain the right to access private information on the former's smartphones. Apple's smartphones are built with encryption that prevents anyone but the owner from accessing local information: that includes hackers, governments and Apple itself. For Soghoian, such a battle (which Apple ultimately won) shows the crucial importance of privacy for something as ubiquitous as a smartphone.

Soghoian goes on to explain that while Apple (which sells high-end smartphones) uses automatic encryption, phones that run Android (the middle and low end option) do not. This has created the "digital security divide," an economic gap that makes middle- and low-income users more susceptible to surveillance than the wealthy.