The Only Safe Phone Is One Even the Police Can't Unlock
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters use it as a short, persuasive primer to send to non-technical people in debates over encryption backdoors and decryption legislation.
What it is
A five-minute CGP Grey explainer arguing that a phone is effectively an extension of your mind, and that any backdoor or master key into encrypted devices will inevitably be abused or leaked. It frames the encryption debate as locks that are either unbreakable or absent.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2016 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends united893 · 2016-05 · on “Judge Grants Search Warrant Forcing Woman to Unlock iPhone with Touch ID”
If you have five minutes, please see this short video from CGPGrey, which summarizes succinctly why access to your phone is akin to access to brain: > [this video]
Recommends sillysaurus3 · 2017-05 · on “FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill”
Yes. [this video] is a pretty good video for persuading people why this legislation is a bad idea. We might still be able to beat it by rallying support.
Recommends urda · 2019-04 · on “The Time Tim Cook Stood His Ground Against the FBI”
> The FBI asked Apple to put a build on a phone that would allow them to brute force the passcode, leaving the device and the build on Apple's premises the entire time. It doesn't matter how well it might be locked down or secured. If the government coerced them into building it, it wouldn't be difficult to go one more step and require apple to hand over the modified OS. This [1] does a great job of explaining why building a master key is just a bad idea. This is a pandora's box we do not need to open. [1] [this video]
Recommends lukifer · 2019-07 · on “Tech firms “can and must” put backdoors in encryption, AG Barr says”
If you need to explain to non-technical friends and family exactly why this is a terrible idea, CGP Grey offers an easily digestible 5-minute primer: [this video] Computers either have unbreakable locks, or no locks whatsoever. There's no stable middle ground.
Cites lukifer · 2020-03 · on “The EARN IT act is an attack on end-to-end encryption”
As much as guns have grown deadlier since 2A was penned, they ultimately scaled linearly; we don't currently have weapons available to citizens which can destroy a city. If the police need to counter a citizen's misuse of guns, they can easily deploy 10x guns of their own. This used to be true of secrets: if there was a legitimate reason for police to crack a safe, it was difficult, but possible. But with encryption, you no longer need 10x force; you need closer to (10^100)x force (not an expert, but close enough for illustration). What's neglected/forgotten is that weakened crypto creates a power asymmetry in the other direction : while there's no way to scale safe-cracking to (10^100), suc
Cites lukifer · 2020-04 · on “Signal threatens to dump US market if EARN IT act passes”
> The entire US constitution is built on the premise that people have rights. As much as I'm near-absolutist on civil liberties, I think it's also valuable to recognize that the intrinsic good of individual rights are only one part of the story; the other is the balance of power between government and the governed. I recently heard Sam Harris opine that from a utilitarian perspective, an absolutist right to privacy pales in comparison to allowing harm to come to children, and so the tech community needs to flex a little on the privacy question, and meet law enforcement halfway. Through that reductionist lens, it's hard to find fault in the argument. The problem isn't limited to privacy, thou
Cites gfxgirl · 2021-01 · on “Null”
maybe not relevant here but my first thought to your question out of context is scale. My house can be easy entered by anyone determined to enter it. They can bust the door down, break the windows, crash a vehicle into it. And yet, almost no one is actually trying to get into my house. Conversely, 1000s of people and possibly hundreds of thousands of bots are trying to break into any software they can that is exposed on the internet (or possibly exposed in other ways like I have no idea if every app on my PC/Mac/Phone/Tablet is scanning my network for devices with known exploits) So, the security of my house (at least where I live) does not have to be so resilient but the security of much of
Cites socalgal2 · 2025-04 · on “Encryption Is Not a Crime”
It doesn't seem like trustworthy governments is the issue. You can't have backdoors period because they'll be leaked / discovered and used by bad actors. [this video]