California follows New York in seeking ban on smartphone encryption

A bill introduced by Sacramento County Assembly member Jim Cooper seeks to set the stage for law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute suspected criminals and organisations committing serious crimes like human trafficking.

The bill calls for banning smartphone encryption.

Over 20 million people end up as victims of human trafficking, annually, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center said. In this version of modern-day slavery, victims are forced into commercial labour or engage in sex acts against their will. Smartphone encryption helps criminals hide their tracks from law enforcement agencies.

In 2014, smartphone manufactures started rolling out new operating systems for mobile devices, using what is called, full-disk encryption (FDE) by default.

According to security software firm Symantec, FDE (also called whole disk encryption) "protects a disc in the event of theft or accidental loss" and "encrypts the entire disc including swap files, system files, and hibernation files."

Unfortunately, human traffickers were using encrypted cell phones "to run and conceal their criminal activities," said Cooper. "Full-disk encrypted operating systems provide criminals an invaluable tool to prey on women, children, and threaten our freedoms while making the legal process of judicial court orders, useless."

The continuing argument over smartphone encryption, between device manufacturers like Apple, devoted to strong encryption, and US federal government officials pushing for backdoors to access data, has now drawn in several states.

New York State Assembly member Matthew Titone introduced a bill last summer that would require smartphone manufacturers to create devices that could be decrypted or unlocked or face fines.

Cooper's bill requires any smartphone manufactured after 1 January, 2017 and sold in California to "be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider."

Violations would attract a fine of $2,500 per phone.

According to commentators, if a bill of the type was passed, it would, like the New York bill, affect both Apple and Google. iOS and Android had default encryption settings that did not allow the companies to access locked customer phones.