The Washington Post has an interesting article by Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson on the Obama’s administration’s support for strong encryption. Nakashima and Peterson are reporting that the administration is backing away from seeking a legislative mandate that technology companies provide a means for law enforcement to decrypt their users’ communications.
Law enforcement departments are continuing their usual dark mumblings about going dark but these are the same warnings they’ve been pushing for 20 years and they can’t point to any cases where the ability to break encryption would have made a difference. Officials in commerce, trade, and technology departments are not persuaded either. They are recommending that the president explicitly disavow a legislative mandate. Even the law enforcement community seems to realize the issue is dead for the time being. An email by Robert Litt, the top intelligence community lawyer, suggests that law enforcement and intelligence should bide their time until “a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.”
Jeffrey Vagle tweets that we may be approaching another Clipper Chip moment.
Are we approaching a clipper chip moment in the second crypto wars? (cc @mattblaze @SteveBellovin) https://t.co/2zFN9GvORL
— Jeffrey Vagle (@jvagle) September 16, 2015
We can only hope he’s right.
In many ways, law enforcement’s predicament reminds me of the situation advertisers find themselves in with the growing use of ad blockers. In both cases users were abused by outrageous actions on the part of the incumbents who are now howling about the end of the world when those users revolt with strong encryption or ad blockers.