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FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday that unless the U.S. government and private industry are able to come to a compromise on the issue of default encryption on consumer devices, legislation may be how the debate is ultimately decided.
"I think there should be [room for compromise]," Wray said Wednesday night at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado. "I don't want to characterize private conversations we're having with people in the industry. We're not there yet for sure. And if we can't get there, there may be other remedies, like legislation, that would have to come to bear."
Wray described the issue of “Going Dark” because of encryption as a "significant" and "growing" problem for federal, state and local law enforcement as well as foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He claims strong encryption on mobile phones keeps law enforcement from gaining access to key evidence as it relates to active criminal investigations.
Source: FBI director: Without compromise on encryption, legislation may be the 'remedy'
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:27PM (15 children)
I was reading about Trump visiting Finland and noticed that 2000 police were guarding him. The article said the whole Finland has 7000. It looked low so I checked around.
Finland has 5.5 million dwellers. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/finland-population/ [worldpopulationreview.com]
Just across the border there is second largest Russia's city of St Petersburg. Its official population is 5.2 million with another 1.7 in the area say 7 millions total. Their total police force, to my surprise, came to 9000 employees (not officers, but total labour force) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Police [wikipedia.org]
Population numbers are subject to controvercy (as there are different estimates and 1-2 million illegals in St Petersburg) but it appears that the "evil police state" of Russia has similar and probably fewer police that Finland.
Checking my hometown of New York, which has 8.5 million people, there are 40,000 police officers (who knows how many employees) in the NY City department alone plus another 10-15,000 of special police such as school police and so on.
The US, at least as represented by the liberal nest of NY, is at least 5 times more police state than Russia.
There will be blood.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)
Do the Russian police actually solve crimes?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 23 2018, @12:07AM (1 child)
Probably. And, they probably fail to solve some crimes. The question is, how important is is to solve every crime? Your answer to that question is probably a good indication of your willingness to live in a police state.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @07:53AM
The answer is "sometimes". They have a strong "thief must be in prison" mentality, so if they they think you are guilty you are fucked (unless you have connections higher up), evidence be damned. They'll torture you if they have to, or maybe even if they don't. Plus, they have to appease a god of statistics who says that they must always solve more crimes every year, which generally translates to "fabricate some evidence", "provoke something that can be used to hang someone on", or just surf around VKontakte for "extremist" content.
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Sunday July 22 2018, @11:03PM (4 children)
Here is the table you want:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers [wikipedia.org]
Finland has one of the lowest Police : Population ratios in the world, and the lowest for western nations (132 police/100k people). According to the table, the USA is relatively average as the 54th lowest ratio and 284 police/100k people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Monday July 23 2018, @01:12AM (3 children)
Something is wrong with this table at least as the US is concerned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_Department [wikipedia.org]
50,000 not counting civilians. 50*284 = 14.2 million people.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday July 23 2018, @02:41AM
It's a table of Countries. But New York City isn't a Country -- believe me, I know because I'm from New York. Although it's richer than Russia -- and almost as rich as South Korea!!!
(Score: 5, Informative) by schad on Monday July 23 2018, @02:46AM (1 child)
What's wrong with it? All you've shown is that NYC has a higher-than-average (for the country as a whole) ratio of cops to citizens (about 581).
For your reference, here are cops per 100k citizens for some major cities:
There are the five (including NYC at #1) largest PDs in the US. So it would seem that you have, perhaps unintentionally, cherry-picked the large city with the worst (from your perspective) ratio. The average for nos. 2 through 5 is 322, not too far from the overall US average from the WP list cited by GP of 284. And since the top 5 given here is by size of the PD, you'd expect the "winners" to have worse ratios. For example, Phoenix is the 5th-largest US city, and Philly is actually the 6th-largest. So you know that Phoenix has a ratio far lower than Philly. I also spot-checked a few other US cities -- not included above because I didn't bother writing down my results -- and found this to be fairly consistent.
In short, NYC is a massive outlier. It is not the norm.
Gotta say, though, NYC has one of the better (i.e. lower) crime rates of major US cities. At least they're getting some bang, as it were, for their buck.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Monday July 23 2018, @05:37PM
Wow, our Russia fans here will mod up anything even remotely positive towards Russia regardless of how blatantly counter-factual it is.
(Score: 1) by noneof_theabove on Monday July 23 2018, @01:20AM (1 child)
Everyone forgot the most important.
1) no private guns
2) only the KGB can kill people, with or with out political affiliation.
3) do a crime and get caught and sentenced, your address changes to SumwharButNowhar, Siberia.
4) internet crimes are for the other countries not their own.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday July 23 2018, @02:22AM
So many Americans think only Americans have guns.
Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Finland [wikipedia.org] (TLDR: 12% of the population including pistols, rifles, and semi-automatic firearms).
Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#Russia [wikipedia.org] (Sounds like NJ or CA, or how those states want to be in five years' time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @01:22AM
Great. Now count in the secret police and domestic spies in Russia too. And compare police powers too.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 23 2018, @06:26AM (1 child)
The majority of police in America are full time toll collectors.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @05:06PM
it's worse than toll collectors. they kidnap and imprison people (destroying whole neighborhoods) just so they can steal their stuff. they are thieves, plain and simple. sometimes they do a little raping to look for plants that aren't any of their goddamn business, but they are criminals and enemies of freedom so what do they care about the constitution. all they understand is force and power and who they think is predator and prey. time to teach them the proper relationship of the police and the people.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday July 23 2018, @09:08AM (1 child)
And the winner is... Vatican City! Praise the Lord
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-police-officers-per-capita.html [worldatlas.com]
Full list here:
http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/list_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers [gutenberg.us]
US comes out lower than many other major nations,
US 256 per 100k
UK 307 per 100k
Germany 298 per 100k
France 356 per 100k
Russia 546 per 100k
China 120 per 100k
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday July 24 2018, @01:37AM
I checked the wiki's references.
Let me point out that statistics from those tables are really wrong for Russia and at least some of Asian countries. The document referenced from wiki is about the total number of employees of the internal affairs department. This department, in addition to police officers, has education facilities starting from kindergarten for all employee's families. It has scientific research centers, including basic research. It has full service medical division enough for all the employees and for some privileged outsiders. It has recreational facilities.
When a Russian police officer takes a vacation he goes to a police owned spa hotel where he gets police doctors medical care, food preprepared by police employees, and massages from a girl employed by the police. All of them are counted in the numbers quoted.
The real number of police officers are way closer to what I mentioned initially and likely lower than Finland's.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.