Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said they want privacy advocates, law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley stakeholders to work together toward solving the so-called “going dark” problem caused by criminals and terrorists who secretly communicate with strong end-to-end encryption.
Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat, and Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, announced plans Tuesday to propose legislation that would establish a “National Commission on Security and Technology Challenges in the Digital Age” as the increasing prevalence of powerful encryption continues to pose problems for authorities.
Democrats and Republicans alike have raised concerns in recent months amid complaints that investigators are routinely unable to uncover digital evidence from smartphones made by companies such as Apple because manufacturers of mobile devices are increasingly allowing customers, terror suspects included, to communicate with one another with ciphertext that can’t be cracked.
Absent a solution that would allow investigators to decode encrypted text while keeping communication platforms secure, however, a rift has widened between Silicon Valley and Washington as tech companies are urged to implement mechanisms that would enable authorities to access and understand otherwise undecipherable text
“It’s probably one of the biggest threats that we have,” Mr. McCaul, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters Tuesday during a conference call. “We want to be able to shine a light on these dark communications so that we can see them in advance and stop anything.”
The lawmakers proposed assembling a group of members from the tech, privacy, law enforcement and intelligence sectors who would be tasked with figuring out a way for law enforcement to access encrypted communications during exigent circumstances.
“What we really want to try to do is take this commission approach, which would put folks in the same room, on a tight timeline, that would look at how we sort through this issue, how there will be periods of going dark and how we minimize that,” Mr. Warner said.
Mr. McCaul said the main roadblock has been getting everyone in the same room.
“It’s been very difficult for the tech community to sit down with the FBI and vice versa, and with the Homeland [Security] and the intelligence community,” he said.
During Tuesday’s conference call, Mr. Warner said that digital encryption was developed for both privacy and security, “so this notion that these two interests are pitted against each other, I think, is a false choice.”
Meanwhile, New York lawmakers are currently mulling a bill that would require any smartphone sold or leased from Albany to Buffalo to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”
“The safety of the citizenry calls for a legislative solution, and a solution is easily at hand. Enacting this bill would penalize those who would sell smart-phones that are beyond the reach of law enforcement,” reads a summary of the bill, which was referred to committee earlier this month.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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