- James Comey, the director of the FBI, told a Senate committee Wednesday that the government should have the right to lawfully access any device or electronic form of communication with a lawful court order, even it is encrypted.
Comey and another Justice Department official briefed the Senate Judiciary Committee and complained that keys necessary to decrypt communications and electronic devices often reside "solely in the hands of the end user"—which they said is emblematic of the so-called "Going Dark problem." Companies should bake encryption backdoors into their products to allow lawful access, they said.
I think the Yahoo CISO got the question right, whenever that was. If you allow the federal government to require backdoors into encryption, that sets a huge precedent. That means international corporations now have to obey ALL international orders to backdoor communications encryption, or stop doing business with the US. If they backdoor all communications for China, for instance, that means they are aiding in signals espionage for a foreign country and committing treason. Their alternative is to not do business with the US, which is just a dent in their wallet. Being hung or losing some business, which do you choose? The US economy would crumble. If they want the communications targeted to each country individually, that's practically impossible. GeoIP to figure out what country you are living in is laughably inaccurate. Your browser telling websites what country you are from is completely unacceptable (even though your browser might be doing this as it is with charsets, mine is not because it is not a legal requirement for you to announce your location on the internet at the moment). After businesses move overseas, they will no longer be in US jurisdiction, and will not comply with the US communications law as the business is being done at the server location (as determined by US court systems). Again, negatively impacting the US economy. The next step to enforcement is to block communications to businesses that do this, which would effectively censor 99% of the internet from the US population. Not even an incompetent congress would pass this, so the FBI needs to stop saying these stupid things. I just realized I tailored this to communications encryption, which was what they previously wanted, but this is about device encryption. To address this, companies will just sell the international versions of their phones, and not make US based ones. I already buy the international versions of phones because they tend to not have as much bloatware and support a larger variety of cell tower frequencies (I get WAY better reception than other people as a result). When the international versions of phones are banned, you are effectively banning the purchase of products because they were not made FOR the US. This, too, would effectively shut us off from the world, and also negatively impact the US economy greatly.