A report from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has revealed that both tech giants – Google and Apple can and will unlock smart phones and tablets when ordered to do so by law enforcing agencies. However, the report also mentions that they are unable to do so in the case that the devices are encrypted. The report details the method that the companies follow while unlocking the devices. It says that Apple requires physical access to unlock their device whereas Google can unlock all android devices remotely. However, this method is resorted to when the owner does not give permission to or cooperates during an investigation.
A safety feature, however, makes this impossible for the company to do. In the event of the devices being encrypted, neither Google nor Apple can unlock them. Apple is known to have enabled the encryption feature as a default in all devices running iOS 8 or higher which means that the company cannot unlock the device without getting access to the passkey set by the user. It also means that all data on the devices remain locked and can be only accessed with cooperation from the said owner.
Android devices are more at risk because Google enabled encryption by default only on its latest version of android – Marshmallow and since it was only released in October 2015, it is yet to roll out to most devices in the world. This means that once Google receives a court order asking them to unlock a particular device and the device isn’t running Android Marshmallow with a passkey, Google can do so immediately, that too remotely and without gaining physical access to the device.
Android does have a full disk encryption feature which was implemented with Android 5. This feature does not allow the device to start without a passkey. However it has not been enabled by default which puts a majority of users at risk.
