Some cryptography / privacy experts see this as a happy medium, in which it’s expensive (time and resource intensive) to get into a phone’s data, discouraging law enforcement from cracking open a phone on a whim (say, if officers are just fishing for probable cause because they don’t have the warrant they want, or an officer is spying on their ex.)

Law enforcement is notorious for abusing forensic technology whether IMSI-catchers to locate phones or $2 chemical drug field tests which react positive to sugar and ashes in an urn: They’re not supposed to be use as a final arbiter that something is a controlled substance rather that a sample should be sent to a lab. But They’re great for establishing probable cause which is grounds for an invasive search.

Throughout the US, most precincts have been repurposed to finding and securing any easily liquidatable assets using asset forfeiture laws on the pretense that the found lucre is criminal (it’s very difficult and costly to prove otherwise, sometimes taking decades) and police teams will take apart a car (or cavity search a woman) if they’ve been tipped the target is loaded with something worth grabbing.

Oh and since around 2013, the NSA has been sending money-in-transit tips to local precincts, what theyve gleaned from PRISM. Purpose creep!