Terrorists hide behind encrypted communications — Federal Bureau of Investigation chief

Providing this kind of access “will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend”, said the report by 13 scientists.

Yet law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders argue that such efforts thwart their ability to monitor kidnappers, terrorists and other adversaries.

There is some serious concern being raised over recent government proposals to regulate communication encryption.

FBI Director James Comey appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to argue for legal support to weaken strong encryption, which he claims obstructs criminal investigations. “But it would put American companies at a disadvantage in the global marketplace”.

The question now is whether other federal officials will side with people like Comey and Cameron or the group of security experts.

And finally, there is the hacker problem, they said.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the intelligence panel’s ranking member, called for such a mandate. Hopefully he will soon start listening, rather than dooming us to repeat the mistakes of the past and dragging us into another round of Crypto Wars.

Opponents allege the administration’s plan amounts to “backdoor” access for governments, a concept anathema to security specialists. The government couldn’t demand companies turn over information because the new technology would give them no way to comply with a court order – increasing, they are introducing devices can only be opened by the user, something known as “strong encryption”. “It’s bad economics because it’ll be hard for our companies to retain the confidence of consumers both here and around the country”. He’s gone as far as to say that such encryption allows people “to place themselves beyond the law”.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said Wednesday that the Justice Department believes the companies – not the government – should maintain the key to unlock encrypted communications.

“We aren’t seeking a back-door approach”.

And contrary to numerous reports, Yates insisted the administration does not want Congress to step in, although she wouldn’t rule it out down the line.

“The problems now are much worse than they were in 1997,” said Peter Neumann of SRI global, another co-author of the paper.

“Lead by persuasion is the way I interpret it”, responded Judiciary Committee head Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

Conceding that strong encryption on devices can render some data inaccessible to investigators, Swire stressed that any loss of access is more than made up for by the availability of location data, social network connections, and databases full of details about suspects’ digital lives.

Join the Computerworld LinkedIn Group. “There’s a device, nearly a devil on their shoulder all day long saying, ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill.’ “. “It may be that, as a people, we decide the benefits here outweigh the costs and that there is no sensible, technically feasible way to optimize privacy and safety in this particular context, or that public safety folks will be able to do their job well enough in the world of universal strong encryption”. “And they disappear”.

“But it is incredibly hard”, Comey added. And part of that – it’s not only the right thing do, but part of that goes to the fact that we are more vulnerable than any other country in the world, on our dependence on cyber. Back then, a group of experts – many of whom are authors on this new report – also wrote critically about the anti-encryption efforts. Recently released Justice Department statistics show that of the 25 state and federal wiretaps that ran into encryption past year, officials could decipher just four.

Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, pressed Yates to provide statistics about the number of criminal cases affected by encrypted data. Encryption scrambles the contents of digital communications, making it impossible for users without the “key” to read messages in plain language. “Is that something that could be studied?” The most common mechanism for checking encryption systems is public disclosure so that it can be picked apart, but even that has flaws.