The White House has abandoned efforts to pass a law limiting the use of end-to-end encryption, but U.S. officials continue to call for Silicon Valley to work with law enforcement to fight terrorism.
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) James Comey. Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images
In the fall of last year, FBI Director James Comey described what he saw as an imminent collision of values: law enforcement's ability to investigate crime and defend national security; and the public's expectation of privacy, free of government intrusion. Encrypted communication, Comey said, was at the center of this brewing storm. Following the decisions of tech companies like Apple and Google to offer encryption on their consumer devices by default, Comey saw his law enforcement capabilities diminish.
"We call it 'Going Dark,' and what it means is this: Those charged with protecting our people aren't always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority," Comey said during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
For Comey, encryption isn't just a benevolent technology that prevents malicious hackers and foreign spies from seeing what they shouldn't, it also keeps law enforcement out — even with a warrant. With end-to-end encryption, sometimes not even the internet companies running messaging services can unscramble encrypted correspondence. "We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so," he said. "Sophisticated criminals will come to count on these means of evading detection."
While technologists and privacy activists insist that so-called government "backdoors" and other special access into encrypted devices would necessarily introduce security vulnerabilities, as well as economic and political dilemmas, Comey asked Silicon Valley to "take a step back" and "consider changing course."
"We also need a regulatory or legislative fix," he said, igniting a debate in Washington that has settled, resettled and raged again throughout 2015, as terrorist attacks renew fears of "going dark."
Kara Swisher of Re/code interviews President Barack Obama. Re/code
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