Last week I wrote about how the Washington Post was being irresponsible by arguing that phone encryption was a greater risk than a benefit for citizens. Because the BAD GUYS or evil people would take advantage of it. Only a few days ago the director of the FBI doubled down on these statements saying that “phone encryption will take us to a very dark place.” Furthermore, the scare mongering examples he provides, cell phone data provided no help nor would have encryption been any sort of hindrance in the investigation.

Phone encryption will more likely force governments and the police to actually get warrants to search phones. As with Passwords courts can order a suspect to hand over encryption keys, in cases where the police don’t have enough evidence to earn a court order they are expected to crack it on their own with their own computer experts. This will likely lead to something of an arms race between police and encryption writers, but that’s already been happening for years.

I think that this is about something bigger than phones though. Once your average computer user has been educated in encryption for phones and loses their fear of encryption, they will likely look into encrypting or expecting their computers to come encrypted. Since phones are fairly easy to hack it makes sense to start with those spaces. However, with the massive amounts of computer leaks at companies lately, it’s likely that Microsoft will begin to encrypt their operating system, eventually consumers will expect it on their personal computers. Laptops and tablets are extremely easy to steal. With encryption it makes the theft a lot less valuable as they have to completely wipe the computer and will be unable to extract any data that might be used for identity theft.

The final end effect might be that users will have true end to end encryption. Which will make it much more difficult for the FBI, CIA, and NSA to spy on ordinary Americans. The end result of phone encryption might actually be that overall Americans have dramatically improved privacy from other Americans, businesses, and governments (not just the American government).

This is why the FBI is terrified.