The government doesn t want a backdoor. The government hopes to get to a place to where if a judge issues an order, the company figures out how to supply that information to the judge and figures out on its own what would be the best way to do that. The government shouldn t be telling people how to operate their systems.
— James Comey, FBI director, in testimony Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee — during which, the New York Times notes, he for the first time provided an example of a terrorist using encrypted communications. (Comey said investigators couldn t read more than 100 text messages between an attacker in Garland, Texas this year and an overseas terrorist. )
Comey told the committee that the government and tech industry aren t at odds over encryption, that both sides care about public safety. He says he has concluded that: It s not a technical issue. It s a business model question. Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so that judges orders cannot be complied with. Should they change their business model? That s a very, very hard question. But we have to wrestle with it because of what s at stake.
Who are these good people Comey is talking about? Well, I wrote in October that Apple said without user passcodes, it s impossible for the company to unlock iPhones running iOS 8 or later. Apple CEO Tim Cook has spoken out strongly for encryption and often says Apple above all cares about its customers privacy. And newer Android phones have encryption turned on by default.
While the Obama administration has not called for weakening encryption, there are other efforts under way to address Comey s concerns. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., are working on a bill that would give law enforcement with a court order the ability to look into an encrypted Web, according to the Daily Dot.
Encryption and other technology, including social media, are in the spotlight especially in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks. Queenie Wong wrote this week that Feinstein and Burr reintroduced a bill that would require tech companies to report terrorist activity to law enforcement. Michelle Quinn wrote that the tech industry has become a convenient political scapegoat in these trying times.
Photo: FBI Director James Comey. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT archives)
The post Quoted: FBI director on encryption, backdoors and good tech companies appeared first on SiliconBeat.
