While President Barack Obama hasn’t made any official statements on whether companies should be required to leave “back doors” to encrypted devices for law enforcement, this week the Justice Department tied the “going dark” issue to one of the president’s priorities for the year, as mentioned in his State of the Union address.
“My foremost task in the cyber area is the vigorous, fair and effective enforcement of our cyber laws,” Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, said at the State of the Net conference in Washington on Jan. 25, filling in for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was unable to get back from a conference in Switzerland due to the snowstorm.
“The Justice Department does that by finding ways to protect our networks against evolving threats, by thwarting bad actors online and by ensuring that both our security and our liberties remain as strong in the digital age as they have been throughout our history,” Caldwell said. “Essentially, we are focused on a question that President Obama posed in his State of the Union address a few weeks ago: How do we make technology work for us and not against us?”
Caldwell noted that while the government has been getting better at using technology to fight crime, so the criminals have gotten better at using it to cover their illicit activities.
To match this, Justice components — including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among others — have created special cyber units to monitor and investigate criminal activity online. But having these units isn’t enough, Caldwell said.
“These emerging threats require nimble, innovative and adaptive responses, and at the Department of Justice we are committed to doing our part to ensure that law enforcement stays a step ahead of bad actors,” she said, later stating this requires the government and private sector working together.
“One area where cooperation between the government and the private sector is especially important is in addressing the growing problem of the government’s inability to obtain critical information in electronic form even when we have court authorization to do so. This is the problem known as ‘going dark,’” Caldwell said, in which telecom companies and Internet service providers can’t respond to a warrant because the relevant device is locked and encrypted.
To solve this, the Justice Department is asking tech companies to build in a “back door” on devices to grant law enforcement access when needed. Many companies and privacy advocates have balked at this request, stating that it will create a gaping vulnerability in every American-made device.
“The security of our online information is critically important and so is the legal process that protects our values and our safety. These are complementary, not competing priorities,” Caldwell said. “After all, digital security is a vital tool but it is not a cure-all — especially when it impedes our ability to protect ourselves and each other in the physical world.”
Caldwell admitted finding the balance between privacy and law enforcement needs is a difficult challenge but said it’s one she thinks the private sector and government can solve together.
“These are novel and difficult challenges,” she said. “But what makes us confident about our ability to succeed is that, throughout our history, this country has always found a way to move forward while retaining the values that make us who we are. We are certain that we will do the same in the digital age.”
