Inside Track
New FBI Director Hints at Backdoors for Encryption
Newly minted FBI Director Christopher Wray seems to be picking up right where his predecessor, James Comey, left off in the war against encryption, telling the attendees at the International Conference on Cyber Security on January 9 that strong encryption is “an urgent public safety issue.”
While speaking at the conference in New York, Wray said that in the fiscal year ending September 30, the FBI was unable to access more than half of the devices it attempted to access, owing to them being encrypted. He said that the number of inaccessible devices was nearly 7,800, adding that the inability to break the encryption on those devices — despite having warrants to access the data stored on them — hinders the agency’s work.
While giving lip service to the importance of strong encryption and security, Wray said the current situation that allows individuals to protect the data on their devices with unbreakable encryption cannot be allowed to continue, adding, “We face an enormous and increasing number of cases that rely heavily, if not exclusively, on electronic evidence.” What Wray appears to be working his way up to is the creation of a “backdoor” to encryption. A backdoor is an idea that has been proposed by surveillance hawks — and rejected by privacy advocates — for years.
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