How much power should the U.S. government have to compel technology companies to help it access their users' encrypted information? Last year’s dramatic showdown between the FBI and Apple fizzled before the courts could shed light on the answer, but the contentious debate is bound to flare up again before long in Washington. What might the next round have in store?
There is still a problem, according to law enforcement officials: the use of encryption is becoming more widespread, and products that do not allow even the providers themselves to access encrypted data, like Apple’s iOS, unreasonably hinder investigations.
The government could again decide to go head-to-head in court with Apple and try to force the company to help investigators access an encrypted device as it did with the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters last year. If the FBI wants to avoid re-litigating the prior dispute, it could instead target an encrypted messaging or e-mail service, applications that use a different form of encryption.
End-to-end encryption, an approach used by WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, and others, prevents service providers from being able to read and hand over people’s messages like is possible with conventional e-mail and chat services. Similar to how it tried to get Apple to build custom software that would help investigators access data stored on an iPhone, the FBI could try to compel a messaging service provider to provide some sort of technical assistance to help investigators read encrypted messages, says Andrew Crocker, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The New York Times reported last March that the Justice Department was “privately debating” how to approach a standoff with WhatsApp over encryption.
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