Law enforcement’s growing inability to access the contents of encrypted cellphones and other electronic devices has created an “urgent public safety issue,” FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Tuesday.
The FBI was unable to glean data off 7,775 digital devices during fiscal year 2017, or more than half of the total devices lawfully seized by federal investigators, Mr. Wray said at a cybersecurity conference, according to a copy of his prepared remarks released by the bureau.
“This problem impacts our investigations across the board,” Mr. Wray told attendees, running the gamut from human trafficking and counterterrorism, to organized crime and child exploitation.
“While the FBI and law enforcement happen to be on the front lines of this problem, this is an urgent public safety issue for all of us,” Mr. Wray added. “Because as horrifying as 7,800 in one year sounds, it’s going to be a lot worse in just a couple of years if we don’t find a responsible solution.”
The FBI has wrestled for years to resolve the so-called “Going Dark” dilemma caused by increasingly ubiquitous digital encryption, evidenced most notably when the Obama administration sued Apple in early 2016 in hopes of compelling the company to crack into an encrypted iPhone recovered from the scene of a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.
Encrypted smartphones have continued to pose problems for law enforcement ever since, however, and the FBI ended up amassing roughly 3,000 cellphones during the first half of fiscal year 2016 incapable of being accessed by investigators, according to the bureau’s former director.
“FBI examiners were presented with over 6,000 devices for which we have a lawful authority search warrant or court order to open, and [in] 46 percent of those cases we could not open those devices with any technique,” said former FBI Director James B. Comey, in testimony last May before the Senate Judiciary Committee on FBI oversight.
“That means half of the devices that we encounter in terrorism cases, in counterintelligence cases, in gang cases, in child pornography cases, cannot be opened with any technique. That is a big problem. And so the shadow continues to fall,” Mr. Comey said.
Eight months later, Mr. Comey’s successor said the “Going Dark” dilemma is more dire than ever.
“The solution, I’ll admit, isn’t so clear-cut,” Mr. Wray said. “It will require a thoughtful and sensible approach, and may vary across business models and technologies, but — and I can’t stress this enough — we need to work fast.
“We have a whole bunch of folks at FBI Headquarters devoted to explaining this challenge and working with stakeholders to find a way forward. But we need and want the private sector’s help. We need them to respond to lawfully issued court orders, in a way that is consistent with both the rule of law and strong cybersecurity. We need to have both, and can have both.”
Tech companies including Apple have previously opposed efforts to weaken the security of commercially sold cellphones and other products because it would make the devices prone to hackers. President Trump, on his part, previously called for boycotting Apple after the company challenged the Justice Department’s lawsuit in 2016.
The FBI ultimately accessed the San Bernardino iPhone, albeit not without reportedly paying a hefty sum to third-party hackers.
“While workarounds like ’lawful hacking’ have been used by law enforcement with some success over the past year, they are not a realistic solution to the problem going forward — they are time-consuming and costly, and become obsolete when new devices and operating systems are released, creating an endless cat-and-mouse system that strains resources and undermines public safety,” the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office warned in a report published last year.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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