Amazon no longer supports encryption to local stored data on its Fire tablets, explaining that devices that are being secured by the feature due to scrambling data was in slight use by the customers.
The move came about on Tuesday where privacy advocates and other users went against the action. Considering Apple's continuous legal battle against the US government, demanding the company to infiltrate a locked phone that was used by Rizwan Farook during the San Bernardino shooting.
Bruce Schneier who's also a cryptologist claimed that Amazon's decision to drop the feature was uncalled for, and demanded on the firm to restore it back, while adding, "Hopefully the market will tell them to do otherwise,"
An amicus brief was filled by Amazon to allow other big tech firms to join in the support of Apple on Thursday, declaring to a federal judge to override the decision of the court order in demands for Apple to build a backdoor to gain access to Farook's iPhone.
A spokeswoman for Amazon Robin Handaly stated in an email that the industry had to disable the feature encryption in the latest version of Fire OS tablet when it was launched this fall. She said, "It was a feature few customers were actually using,"
Dan Guido an encryption expert suggested that the feature might've been dropped due to cutting cost of component that was selling as low as $50 for tablets.
Staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Jeremy Gillula said, "Given that the information stored on a tablet can be just as sensitive as that stored on a phone or on a computer, Amazon should instead be pushing to make device encryption the default not removing it,"
Removing encryption on devices goes against basic cybersecurity principles, if a criminal managed to access an encrypted device, they would get nothing but scrambled data.
