FBI Director James Comey said the government needs access to encrypted messages to help fight terrorism.
After numerous meetings with technology companies, Comey said he's come to realize that granting special access to law enforcement is not a technological problem, but a question of business imperatives. And it is unknown if the Paris attackers had used encrypted communications. The exchange looked like a veiled jab at and Apple.
"Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so that judges" orders can not be complied with, for reasons that I understand", Comey said in an apparent swipe at iPhone-maker Apple. He told the senators that "plenty of companies" provide services online while still maintaining the ability to read their users' data, and that "plenty" of smartphone manufacturers can unlock encrypted phones. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she meant to pursue legislation that would give law enforcement access to encrypted communications. The remark represented one of two instances at the hearing in which Comey indirectly condemned Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who last week said the United States should ban any Muslims from entering the country.
"That morning before one of those terrorists left to try to commit mass murder, he exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist", Comey says. "Some of it we have not", one official said.
Comey called encryption a "big problem" that is thwarting investigators and pointed to the Garland, Texas shooting as an example. A U.S. ban on encryption won't hamper terrorist plots.
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Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor, said the White House is focused on improving intelligence sharing and law enforcement agreements with partners in Europe "so that there's better screening of where people have traveled". This is why technologists must continue to dispel the myths behind the arguments against encryption.
Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) were among those questioning whether banning unbreakable encryption could put USA companies at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy without solving the underlying problem. The server passes on the coded message to the intended recipient, who is the only person who holds the key to reading it. Instead, Comey is asking for the tech company to retain a readable version of that initial message, just in case.
Government officials have also expressed similar thoughts.
"Trying to legislate secure apps like WhatsApp out of existence or require them to have surveillance backdoors won't keep strong encrypted products out of terrorists' or criminals' hands", said Kevin Bankston, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, a Washington-based tech thinktank.
