Encrypting smart phones is a useful strategy that the government can adopt to ensure that mobile phone and tablet users are able to enjoy the use of their product safely without fear of cyber bullying. The risk of cyber bullying has extensive impacts on individual lifestyles, which has encouraged the government through the FBI to seek backdoor access to products from companies such as Apple and Samsung. Encrypting mobile devices by default will increase security from cybercriminals for regular smart phone users (Miller, 2014).While the FBI wants access to private information, the company owners face the risk of significant financial losses leading to a legal scuffle between the two entities.
We can use Kant’s categorical imperative that proposes moral rationality as an ultimate such that lack of morality obviously becomes the opposite of the required or the upright. Kant continues to purport that moral uprightness is a key to freedom. When considering the encryption of products by the FBI, one would perceive that it promotes the freedom of enjoying technology products. However, a counterargument to this is that it affects the manner in which people are able to interact, especially in knowledge that someone or the government for that matter is watching them (Wheeler, 2008). Kant’s arguments are that good will, virtue may not be the only way to freedom, and sometimes-utilitarian approaches are the only option for freedom.
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We therefore conclude that encrypting of phones may be a breach of privacy and expensive to technology companies but ensures safety of the consumers in the long term. For instance, iPhone recently considered encrypting their product by default. However, the financial implications of the decisions still keep the companies at bay.
References
Miller, J. (2014). Google and Apple to introduce default encryption, BBC News, Sep. 19, 2014,
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29276955.
Wheeler, R. C. (2008). Kantian imperatives and phenomenology's original forces: Kant's
Imperatives and the directives of contemporary phenomenology . Washington, D.C: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.