FBI expects US government to conduct more lawsuits over encryption

FBI Director James Comey expects the US government to file more lawsuits related to access to information in the future. The federal investigation service says it has a lot of problems with encryption.

Comey called encryption an “essential tool” of terrorist groups on Wednesday, Reuters reports. He added that the FBI has been severely affected by WhatsApp’s recently implemented end-to-end encryption. The service is said to have no plans to sue parent company Facebook.

The FBI director also explained that 4,000 attempts have been made to gain access to a device since October. In 500 of those cases, these attempts were unsuccessful, with none of the devices examined involved an iPhone 5c, as in the case of the San Bernardino shooter. At the end of March, the FBI managed to crack that device with the help of an unknown third party and is investigating possibilities to use the tool used on other devices. Comey said, according to Reuters, that he himself does not know who the party is that has approached the FBI for help.

The European counterpart of the FBI also appears to be struggling with encryption. Like this reported Europol director Rob Wainwright tweeted a few days ago that “encryption is a problem in 75 percent of all Europol cases.” He did not explain this further, but responded in another announcement that according to him the solution should be sought in ‘regulated front door access’, and not via backdoors.

It is unclear what that regulated access ‘through the front door’ should look like according to him. He initially responded to a column in The Guardian, in which journalist John Naughton argued that at some point there will have to be an answer to the question of whether everyone has the right to uncrackable encryption or whether governments should be able to access data on request. see.