As feds and private companies come to grips with the dueling security issues at the heart of the encryption debate, two lawmakers are preparing to create a commission to find answers to the major questions.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said they plan to introduce legislation next week to establish an independent commission to define the issues around digital security and propose solutions that will keep citizen data safe while still allowing law enforcement the access they need to prosecute criminals and terrorists.
“We need to find a solution to a Paris-style attack where terrorists are using end-to-end encryption” that doesn’t create a ‘backdoor’ criminals and other adversaries can use to compromise data security, McCaul said during a Feb. 24 panel discussion hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Warner noted encryption as a security mechanism is “here to stay” and in fact necessary to ensure that consumers and governments alike can protect sensitive data. The problem, he said, is the major stakeholders — namely law enforcement and the companies producing communications and encryption technology — seem to be “talking past each other,” making it impossible to come to a consensus.
“The stakeholders are not able to sit down and have a conversation,” McCaul, a former federal prosecutor, agreed, calling encryption “the biggest challenge for federal law enforcement in my lifetime.”
The proposed commission would modeled after the 9/11 Commission, a bipartisan group that looked into the lapses in national security that led to 2001 terrorist attacks.
Participants — which would include law enforcement, tech companies, privacy advocates, encryption experts and an ex-officio member from the administration — will have one year to come up with workable policy and technology solutions to the problem.
Imposing a tight timeline will be instrumental to making the commission effective, both lawmakers said, though Warner noted the body’s work will be “much broader than what’s in the news,” citing the ongoing legal battle between Apple and the FBI.
That specific fight will be settled in the courts, he said. However, “The digital security issue is going to have to be decided by Congress.”
If the U.S. doesn’t lead on this issue, other countries will, both lawmakers noted. This could lead to the “balkanization of the Internet,” as Warner put it, which would be bad for America and the Internet as a global asset.
Similarly, “a static solution” that proposes a single fix without looking to the future “would drive criminals and terrorists to foreign systems” not bound by U.S. law, Warner said. “That’s not a solution.”
As both parties on the Hill and the administration all believe this is an issue of immediate importance, McCaul and Warner said they expect to get broad support for the bill next week.
“I predict this gets a lot of momentum,” McCaul said. “I believe this will get fast-tracked.”
Warner said he is hopeful that a balanced commission can generate real solutions to the problem.
“We just need to get these folks in the room,” he said.
