Eyes on Obama as FBI, Congress Blast Encryption

Tech companies like Google and Apple insist that encryption protects consumers from having their personal information stolen, but lawmakers are heightening their scrutiny of these services – and it is unclear how President Barack Obama will resolve the dispute.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., is among the officials directly criticizing Silicon Valley for giving terrorists the potential means to chat anonymously through those services. 

“Here’s my message to Silicon Valley: Change your business model tomorrow,” Graham said during an interview Wednesday with Fox News. “There’s technology available to terrorists where they can communicate without – even with a court order.” 

Obama also raised pressure on this issue during his Oval Office remarks about counterterrorism on Sunday, stating “I will urge high-tech and law-enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.”

Obama’s official position is that he is not seeking legislation that would weaken encryption, but privacy advocates are hoping to pressure him to take a stand in favor of the ability to use the technology.

Kevin Bankston, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, says he and other privacy advocates met Thursday with White House officials from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Security Council. The White House is seeking public input as it works toward a decision on encryption after a petition requesting Obama “endorse strong encryption” received more than 100,000 signatures.

“They did not signal a change in policy, but they agree that it is time for this discussion to go beyond the use of encryption to how law enforcement and government can be more effective,” Bankston says. “We made clear to them that the best way to move on is end this ‘debate’ about encryption. The longer we keep having this debate we have had since the ‘90s, the longer it will take for us to have discussions about how investigations can be effective in a world where encryption exists.”

Investigators are also having difficulty accessing some files used by the couple who killed 14 people last week during the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, ABC News reports without specifying whether the files were encrypted.

Google and Apple earned Comey’s wrath last year when they announced they would increase encryption of their services to prevent the consumer data from being accessed by hackers or fraudsters – or government spy agencies in the event they obtain a court order. During the hearing Wednesday, Comey criticized the assertion by these and other companies that encrypting chats or encrypting data stored locally on mobile phones is essential to consumer security.

“If there is conspiracy going on over the Internet, that encryption ought to be able to be pierced,” she said.