FBI chief defends encryption stance

FBI Director James Comey tried to clear the air Monday in an ongoing clash between the government and technologists, privacy advocates and lawmakers over encryption standards.

Ahead of back-to-back Senate hearings on Wednesday, Comey penned a short op-ed on the popular national security blog Lawfare that defended his agency’s much-maligned position that there are downsides to widespread encryption.

{mosads}“My job is to try to keep people safe,” he said. “In universal strong encryption, I see something that is with us already and growing every day that will inexorably affect my ability to do that job.”

Comey has been pressing for Congress to give investigators a legal framework that would guaranteed access, with a warrant, to encrypted data. Many have pushed back, arguing any such guarantee ruins encryption, creating a vulnerability for nefarious actors to exploit.

The FBI head claims he is simply trying to inform public debate as society weighs the benefits and drawbacks of universal encryption.

Americans are not far from living in a world where “our conversations and our ‘papers and effects’ will be locked in such a way that permits access only by participants to a conversation or the owner of the device holding the data,” Comey said.

“There are many benefits to this,” he acknowledged, explaining that encryption protects “innovation” and “private thoughts” from thieves.

However, “there are many costs to this,” Comey added.

For example, Comey said Islamic extremists behind the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) recruit and Americans and plan attacks through “a process that increasingly takes part through mobile messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted, communications that may not be intercepted, despite judicial orders under the Fourth Amendment.”

This has created a “tension” between private and safety, he said. “Democracies resolve such tensions through robust debate.”

Comey conceded that society may “decide the benefits here outweigh the costs and that there is no sensible, technically feasible way to optimize privacy and safety in this particular context.”

But until then, Comey will continue to push his warnings of the dangers such a decision would pose to the country.

He’ll get his biggest chance yet to bring this message to Congress on Wednesday, when the agency director will appear before the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.

In past hearings on encryptions, FBI officials have not been greeted kindly by lawmakers.

Comey will likely receive a similar grilling from both panels.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Judiciary panel, has hammered the bureau over its use of remote surveillance technology to potentially crack encrypted communications.

The committee chair wrote the FBI in June, requesting more information about how it uses these type of technologies.

The Intelligence panel also includes staunch encryption advocates such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who bashed Comey’s digital security stance in a December op-ed.

“What these officials are proposing would be bad for personal data security and bad for business and must be opposed by Congress,” Wyden wrote.

Last month, Wyden unsuccessfully tried to amend a surveillance reform bill to forbid the government from compelling companies to install access points into their encryption.