The government and privacy advocates can’t agree on what ‘strong’ encryption even means

A group of privacy advocates and tech companies recently asked the Obama Administration to publicly support "strong encryption." But Obama Administration officials have already said they support strong encryption -- repeatedly. In fact, President Barack Obama called himself a "strong believer in strong encryption". The problem is that no one can agree on what "strong encryption" actually means.

The petition is just the latest salvo in a battle over how much access law enforcement should have to communications and data secured by encryption -- and whether tech companies should be forced to enable the government to unlock that data, through a practice commonly known as a "backdoor." The definition debates are just part of the difficulty of coming up with a policy for encryption. A more deep-seated problem is that technologists have long said it is impossible to provide the type of access law enforcement officials want without fundamentally undermining the security of communications products. Law enforcement officials have, in turn, suggested that tech companies just aren't trying hard enough to come up with a solution.