The CNN Website has a deeply dishonest Op Ed by Mike Rogers on Encryption. Rogers is the former Congressman who served as the head of the Select Committee on Intelligence. You may remember him as the apologist for the NSA’s phone metadata collection program who claimed you have nothing to be concerned about because the metadata does not include your name, only your phone number, so the records can’t be tied back to you. Who knew about phone books?
That sort of dishonestly is already reason enough to disregard anything he has to say on the matter but even taken on its own terms, the Op Ed is disingenuous. He makes the reasonable observation that sometimes the public good outweighs a company’s desire to make a profit. For example, even though trafficking in child pornography or money laundering might be profitable, everyone agrees that it’s sound public policy to prohibit them. It’s the same, he says, with encryption. But, of course, that ignores the fact that encryption, unlike child pornography or money laundering, serves a useful public purpose as Mike McConnell, Michael Chertoff, and William Lynn—experienced government officials with intelligence backgrounds—explained in a recent Op Ed in the Washington Post. Note, also, the insulting and dishonest intimation that the only reason for resistance to the backdoors is a desire on the part of tech companies to profit at the public’s expense.
Of course, no piece like this would be complete without waving the terrorism banner. The Op Ed starts with a video of FBI director Comey testifying that we risk “going dark,” a perennial FBI talking point that is debunked every time it’s raised. The video is labeled “FBI: U.S. can’t crack secret terror messages from ISIS.” If only the tech companies would install backdoors, this couldn’t happen. Except, of course, it would. ISIS doesn’t care very much about U.S. laws and will simply use one of the many open source encryption programs available to communicate securely while the rest of us suffer from decreased security. It is, really, just another example of the dishonesty of the piece. It’s too bad CNN chose to publish such a flawed and deceitful Op Ed. We deserve better.
