The tech view from the jury box

[Bloomberg] [Fully Charged]( From [Bloomberg](   [FOLLOW US [Facebook Share]]( [Twitter Share]( [SUBSCRIBE [Subscribe]](  Hi, folks. It's [Shira](mailto:sovide@bloomberg.net). A recent experience as a juror in a criminal trial gave me a different outlook on a contentious technology debate. The defendant was a man accused of serially harassing his ex-girlfriend. Some of the evidence against him was a digital trail of thousands of phone calls to the woman at her home and work, and digital nude images of her that he sent to her family members and posted online. Prosecutors had downloaded reams of records from the man's Android smartphone; they went through legal channels to confirm his ownership of the email account used in some of the online harassment; and they had logs of months of his outgoing landline calls to the ex-girlfriend. I wondered what would have happened if he had used different technology and communications to cover his tracks. What if the defendant had used a recent model of the iPhone, which is considered more secure from excavation, or if he had used Tor technology and an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp to call, text and create online accounts for those nude images? There could have been fewer digital breadcrumbs of his harassment, and maybe I would have been less sure of his guilt. (My fellow jurors and I convicted the defendant of most charges against him.) The case gave me a fresh perspective on the warnings from law enforcement and prosecutors that digital locks on smartphones and the growing number of encrypted apps are hindering them from catching or convicting criminals. In a widely publicized [episode in 2016](, the U.S. government sought to force Apple to bypass the passcode on an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack. In the debate between digital privacy and public safety, I have mostly been on the side of technologists who say there's no way to make software or hardware secure from the bad guys but breakable for the good guys. It doesn't help that government officials have reportedly [overstated]( the number of locked smartphones they can't access in criminal investigations. Sitting in the jury box, I wavered. I took my courtroom musings to the ACLU's Jennifer Granick, an expert on digital privacy and a former criminal defense attorney. She said even if law enforcement and prosecutors can't access every morsel of digital information when investigating a crime, there is often more than one way to compile the same evidence. In this harassment case, even if there weren't records from the defendant's cellphone, her phones had records of the same communications. Law enforcement and prosecutors also obtain legal orders for customers' phone calls or text message data from tech and telecom companies, cloud backups of smartphone activity, account information from websites, mapping app location and other evidence. And people are convicted on eyewitness testimony, including before there was so much digital flotsam. With or without encryption, there is growing trail of our activity online and in the real world. We need to keep talking about how secure the technology is, and how secure we want it to be. As a generally law-abiding person and a journalist, I want my communications and digital activity to be as secure as possible from identity thieves, spies and yes, intrusion by law enforcement or legal authorities. But I also don't want people to get away with crimes. Sitting on the jury, I felt willing to give up a little more of my personal privacy to make sure my fellow citizens are safe. Where to draw that line, though, is decidedly not black and white. —Shira Ovide](  And here’s what you need to know in global technology news Apple has shed $107 billion in market value during a five-day stock slump, as investors [reassess (again)]( the prospects for iPhone sales and revenue growth.  It's been a bumpy year for Chinese technology giants, but Tencent bucked the trend with [higher-than-expected earnings](. The bad news was revenue grew at the slowest pace in three years as the Chinese government tightens restrictions on video games.  One part of Morgan Stanley believes data-mining startup Palantir is worth $4 billion. Another part of the bank says it will be worth as much as $41 billion soon. [Cue the drama](.  Revenue growth at Uber slowed sharply in the third quarter. The combination of [slowing growth, large losses and markets with tough competition]( aren't a great pitch in an Uber IPO expected next year.  A behind-the-scenes account of Facebook's two years of crises reveals executives downplaying evidence of the social network's problems, until they couldn't deny any more, and then using [aggressive tactics]( to shape public opinion and lawmakers' actions, according to the New York Times.   Sponsored Content by BSI Effective cybersecurity must be rooted in a data governance framework that includes the proper policies, procedures and controls that can prevent unauthorized access and data breaches. BSI wrote the first standard for information security and continues to be at forefront of innovation and [information resilience]([.](   You received this message because you are subscribed to the Bloomberg Technology newsletter Fully Charged. 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