FBI: Companies Using Encryption Should Rethink Business Model

FBI Director James Comey said in a hearing that US tech companies that encrypt their products by default, such as smartphones, “should consider changing their business model” to provide user data under a court order.

Comey will make the statement to the US Senate. He emphasizes that he does not want the US government to oblige the placing of a backdoor in devices. “Governments shouldn’t be telling companies how to operate their systems,” he said. Comey does foresee a situation in which American manufacturers of, for example, smartphones will receive a court order stating that they must hand over data from a certain user, after which they ‘find out themselves’ how they obtain that data. Several parties, including President Obama himself, emphasize the importance of the cooperation of tech companies, while at the same time saying that they do not want to legislate to guarantee that access.

As an example, the director of the FBI cites the shooting in Garland, Texas in May of this year. One of the two perpetrators of that shooting exchanged 109 messages that day with an “overseas terrorist”, according to Comey. “To this day I cannot say what he discussed with that terrorist because those messages are encrypted,” the director claims. Only the two perpetrators were killed in the shooting due to the intervention of local police officers. The two were equipped with body armor and assault rifles and wanted to raid a Mohammed cartoon contest.

Questions from the Senate show that Comey is aware that decrypting smartphones, for example, does not yet lead to full access to a suspect’s data. An app can also apply encryption itself to its data communication and storage, which would have to be circumvented separately. He then says that although the data of every suspect cannot be exposed with a court order, it does remove ‘a large part’ of the problem. He also realizes that manufacturers outside the US are not covered by this. That is why he prefers to see international cooperation to achieve the same abroad when necessary.