Battle resumes in the United States over law enforcement access to mobile devices
Law enforcers want the right to access smartphones to combat crime as Google and Apple strengthen encryption used in their devices
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 01 October, 2014, 8:11pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 02 October, 2014, 3:24am
Agence France-Presse in Washington
A fight over privacy. Photo: AFP
A new battle is brewing in the United States over privacy for mobile devices, after moves by Google and Apple to toughen the encryption of their mobile devices sparked complaints from law enforcers.
The issue is part of a long-running debate over whether tech gadgets should have privacy-protecting encryption which makes it difficult for law enforcement agencies to access in time-sensitive investigations.
FBI Director James Comey reignited the issue last week, criticising Apple and Google for new measures that keep smartphones locked down - without even the company holding the keys to unlock the data.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey addresses the Intelligence and National Security Summit on September 19 in Washington, D.C. Photo: AFP
Former FBI criminal division chief Ronald Hosko made a similar point in an opinion piece in The Washington Post, citing a case in which the agency used smartphone data to solve a brutal kidnapping just in time to save the life of the victim.
"Most investigations don't rely solely on information from one source, even a smartphone," he said. "But without each and every important piece of the investigative puzzle, criminals and those who plan acts destructive to our national security may walk free."
Observers who follow privacy and encryption say they have seen this debate before.
In the mid-1990s, as the internet was gaining traction, the government pressed for access to digital "keys" to any encryption software or hardware, before abandoning the effort.
"This is crypto wars 2.0," said Joseph Hall of the Centre for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights group active in both campaigns.
Today, "the main difference is that phones are increasingly deeply personal, containing much more daily life and interaction than a desktop from the 1990s", Hall said.
Hall argued that giving law enforcers access required companies to "engineer vulnerabilities" which could be exploited by hackers or others.
Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the FBI had been making these arguments since 1995.
"Regulating and controlling consumer use of encryption was a monstrous proposal officially declared in 2001," she said in a blog post. "But like a zombie, it's now rising from the grave, bringing the same disastrous flaws with it."
In 2013, before the revelations of massive surveillance from leaked National Security Agency documents, the FBI called for broader authority to capture mobile communications which fall outside traditional surveillance, such as Skype.
But civil liberties activists say leaked NSA documents suggest that contrary to FBI claims made last year, the government has many tools at its disposal.
"There are an increasing number of places where we leave our digital trails," Hall said, including in the internet cloud, where it can be accessed with a court order.
Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford University Centre for Internet and Society, said the FBI argument overlooked the fact that US tech firms had to compete in the global marketplace.
"Global customers do not want backdoored products any more than Americans do, and with very good reason," Granick wrote on the "Just Security" blog.
"Authoritarian countries … want to censor, spy on, and control their citizens' communications. These nations are just as able to make demands that Apple and Google decrypt devices as the FBI is."
On balance, she said, "the public is more secure, not less secure, with the wide use of strong cryptography - including cryptography without back doors".
