FBI director calls for tech to change encryption business model

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that strong encryption technology is stymieing the execution of court orders, insisting that companies should adjust their business models to accommodate law enforcement.

“There are plenty of companies today that provide secure services to their customers and still comply with court orders,” Comey told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “This is not a technical issue, it is a business model question.”

{mosads}In the wake of the deadly attacks on Paris and San Bernardino, pressure has been rising on Apple, Google and other technology companies to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies some form of guaranteed access to encrypted devices.

Supporters of such access argue that encryption technology that can’t be unlocked even by the manufacturer allows terrorists and other criminals to “go dark,” or communicate out of the reach of law enforcement.

Comey said Wednesday there is “no doubt the use of encryption is part of terrorist tradecraft now” because “they understand the problems [law enforcement] has getting court orders.”

Although he declined to discuss the specifics of the investigations into the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, Comey noted that one of the shooters in the Garland, Texas, attack on a contest to draw a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed exchanged 109 encrypted messages with overseas terrorists.

“We have no idea what he said, because those messages were encrypted,” Comey said.

Comey has long warned that unbreakable encryption — like the technology found on the latest iPhone operating system — prevents law enforcement from executing lawful warrants and shields terrorists from needed surveillance.

He has previously suggested that unbreakable encryption could result in the death of a child, a warning he alluded to again in Wednesday’s hearing.

Tech companies insist that building in any kind of guaranteed access for the government would breach consumer privacy and build weaknesses into the technology that would allow criminals to hack into devices just as easily as law enforcement.

This fall, Apple rejected a court order to turn over communications sent using its iMessage feature, citing its encryption system.

Apple has also claimed that forcing it to extract data from older operating systems that the company can still decrypt would “threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand.”

Comey indicated Wednesday that he believes tech companies have stood behind stiff encryption out of competitive interests.

To many tech firms, the revelation of the scope of government surveillance by whistleblower Edward Snowden was an embarrassment that also endangered their bottom lines.

“I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an open letter on the company’s site. “We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”

Comey insisted Wednesday that he is not advocating for a much-maligned backdoor into private technology.

“The government hopes to get to a place where if the government issues an order, the company figures out how to supply that information on its own,” he said. “The government shouldn’t be telling people how to operate their systems.”

Comey said he is engaged in ongoing and productive conversations with Silicon Valley.

“We’re not going to break the Internet by getting to a place where companies comply with court orders,” he said.

The testimony sparked some concern among lawmakers that tech companies could be recalcitrant in shifting their stance.

If firms have already decided that strong encryption is in their best interest, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked “where is the leverage point” for the FBI in its ongoing conversations with Silicon Valley?

Several lawmakers raised concerns that forcing U.S. firms to manufacture breakable encryption would merely push criminals onto foreign-made platforms and would not wholly solve the “going dark” problem.

Comey agreed, calling for international norms governing encryption.

“This isn’t going to solve the whole problem,” Comey said. “You don’t want to just chase the problem offshore; there has to be an international component to this.”

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) were among those questioning whether banning unbreakable encryption could put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage in the international economy without solving the underlying problem.

“We ought not put U.S. manufacturers in a position in which they’d be punished relative to other manufacturers,” Lee warned. “We ought to remember the limits on what we can do legislatively, it wouldn’t necessarily fix the problem.”