FBI Seeks to Reframe Encryption Debate

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is issuing a more direct challenge to technology companies in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and California, urging them in blunter terms to allow investigators to decrypt private communications during terror probes. Hoping to escape a continuing debate over the technical feasibility of decryption, which they fear plays into Silicon Valley’s hands, FBI Director James Comey and others are pushing executives to move away from a policy they say values customers’ privacy over public safety. “It is a business-model question,” Director Comey said at a recent congressional hearing, adding that executives “have designed their systems and their devices so that judges’ orders cannot be complied with…Should they change their business model? That is a very, very hard question.”

Challenging tech CEOs like Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook directly suggests that Director Comey could be laying the groundwork for a push in Congress for legislation that would force the companies to change their products. So far, however, there is no indication the tech industry is retreating from its argument that strong encryption is necessary to protect users’ information, and that providing a technological “key” or “backdoor” for law enforcement would simply make the information more vulnerable to hackers of all kinds.