Summary
To understand what’s at stake in the battle between Apple and the F.B.I. over cracking open a terrorist’s smartphone, it helps to be able to predict the future of the tech industry.
For that, here’s one bet you’ll never lose money on: Digital technology always grows hungrier for more personal information, and we users nearly always accede to its demands. Today’s smartphones hold a lot of personal data — your correspondence, your photos, your location, your dignity. But tomorrow’s devices, many of which are already around in rudimentary forms, will hold a lot more.
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“From a historical perspective, we’re entering into a very new era,” said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Not long ago, we were living in a world in which surveillance was difficult. “In the past, you and I would have a conversation in person. No record would be made; nobody would have access to it. I wrote things on paper; I burned them in my fireplace. They were gone forever.”
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“Now we have a surveillance-enabled world,” Ms. Granick said. “It’s cheap, and it’s easy. The question that society has to ask is, Is that what we really want?”
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