The House Judiciary Committee recently held hearings on encryption and what should be our policy concerning disputes such as those between Apple and the FBI. If the committee reaches the wrong decisions it won’t be because they didn’t have expert and thoughtful testimony.
Susan Landau, a Professor of Cybersecurity Policy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, testified March 1, 2016 on security threats, encryption, and securing smartphones. She explained to the committee in careful detail that the issues are not as simple as they seem and that our security is (much) better served by having unbreakable security on our devices—especially on our smartphones. ‘Especially’ because our smart phones are already our access to personal, financial, and proprietary commercial information both through data held on the phones themselves and through access credentials held on the phones. Landau says this situation is accelerating and that it is crucial that these devices be secure if we as a nation are going to defend against the increasing cyber attacks from criminals and unfriendly nation states.
Sadly, this debate has been mischaracterized by a lazy and ignorant press as a fight between security and privacy. The goal, they say, is to balance privacy and security. Landau makes the point that the choice is not between privacy and security, although that tension is also present, but between security and less security. That’s a point that’s been mostly missed by those commenting on the issue.
Landau says that the FBI is stuck with a 20th century view of investigative techniques and that they need to let go of their agent-centric view and adopt one that realizes that most crimes today have a cyber component. She says that it is possible to do effective investigations even with unbreakable smartphones but the FBI needs to upgrade their technical capabilities. They are, she says, where the NSA was in 1999. As the NSA has shown, it is still possible to perform effective surveillance even in the face of encryption.
The testimony is a bit long but it’s an interesting and informed read. It’s a great place to point someone who is undecided about the debate but still has an open mind.