The Government Wants to Crack Your iPhone. Here's Why They Can't.

Technologists have fought the government in the Crypto Wars for decades in hopes of obtaining privacy for individuals. Today we are living in a time when their ideas are being fully realized.

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Forty-two years after unbreakable encryption was first conceived, these tools are more widespread than ever before. One milestone came in 2016, when the world's largest messaging service—WhatsApp—announced it would offer default end-to-end encryption on all communications. In other words, the messages can be read only by the senders and recipients; even the platform provider can't access them.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are still reckoning with this new reality. For decades, they demanded that tech companies hand over private data on their users, sometimes without obtaining warrants. So companies like Apple changed their policies so individual users were the only ones holding the keys to their data.

Written, produced, shot, edited and graphics by Paul Detrick. Additional cameras by Alex Manning and Todd Krainin.

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