NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, and professor at King's College in London, Peter Neumann, joined Morning Joe on MSNBC yesterday to discuss whether what happened in Paris on November 13th could happen in New York City.

Bratton's response when asked if such an attack could happen in NYC: "It could."

"We have long believed that we are the number one terrorist target in the world because of all we represent," Bratton said.

Bratton also said that a terrorist attack like the one that happened last week in Paris is "something the police in our city have been constantly preparing for and trying to protect against."

"We're working very hard to make sure that it does not happen here," Bratton said.

Bratton said there are two difficult parts of preparing against suicide attacks: one is asking officers to rush at terrorists while knowing the ballistic capabilities of their suicide vests, and the second is not being able to read potential attackers' text messages.

"We want to know how far those projectiles spew out," Bratton said. "We also want to know their communication. What types of phones were they using? What type of apps were they using?"

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Bratton said the NYPD has a huge operation in NYC where they team up with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and monitor cell phones. Then, suddenly, the trail goes dark because the person they're tracking is communicating with an encrypted app.

"They're going onto an encrypted app, they're going onto sites that we cannot access," Bratton said. "Basically, the technology has been purposefully designed by manufacturers so that even they claim that they cannot get into their own devices after they've built them."

Bratton's solution? For tech companies to add backdoor keys to their encryption so the NYPD and the FBI can read people's communication. 

However, Cryptography experts stress that backdoors would open devices to for all types of hackers to read our text messages; not just government officials.

"The idea that is being floated by law enforcement that there is some way to have secure communication that is also accessible by law enforcement," lawyer and privacy advocate Abi Hassen told Gothamist. 

jabob_the_bobjay Anyone else feel the need for disclaimers like this? #iphone #surveillance #telescreen #monitoring #governmentsurveillance #espionage #libertarian #fourthamendment #rights #privacy

"The fact is that if the encryption is broken to let law enforcement see all of our private communications, it is also broken for other actors, including the Chinese hackers we keep hearing about," Hassen said.

Still, these encrypted messages remain a main point of frustration for Bratton.

"We're seeing it every day, where we are losing the ability to gather intelligence," Bratton said. "To stay on the offense, you can't just play defense. You have to be on the offense, offense is intelligence, and we are losing a lot of that intelligence we're meant to because of this issue." 

We have so much appreciation for the vigor with which Bratton wants to keep us safe. However, we'd also rather if the NYPD didn't have access to our text messages, you feel us?

For now, we don't have to worry. The Obama administration abandoned plans to enact a law requiring Internet companies to give investigators access to encrypted messages in October. 

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"The United States government is actively engaged with private companies to ensure they understand the public safety and national security risk that result from malicious actors' use of their encrypted products," FBI Director James Comey said in October.

Once again, we find ourselves at a crossroads between safety and privacy. Once again, we're forced to contend with the fact that far too often surveillance is enacted more heavily against certain ethnicities than others.

So, in this battle, we'll choose privacy. We stand by the fact that we'd prefer if Bill Bratton didn't read our text messages, even though we'd be remiss and ungrateful if we didn't say we appreciated his tireless efforts to keep our city safe.

Check out 3 Liberating Things to Do in NYC So Evil Doesn’t Win.

[via MSNBC]

[Feature Image Courtesy Washington Post]