FBI chief wants ‘backdoor access’ to encrypted communications to fight ISIS

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/fbi-chief-wants-backdoor-access-to-encrypted-communications-to-fight-isis/



FBI chief wants ‘backdoor access’ to encrypted communications to fight ISIS
Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian
08 Jul 2015 at 14:04 ET

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned US senators that the threat from the Islamic State merits a “debate” about limiting commercial encryption – the linchpin of digital security – despite a growing chorus of technical experts who say that undermining encryption would prove an enormous boon for hackers, cybercriminals, foreign spies and terrorists.

In a twin pair of appearances before the Senate’s judiciary and intelligence committees on Wednesday, James Comey testified that Isis’s use of end-to-end encryption , whereby the messaging service being used to send information does not have access to the decryption keys of those who receive it, helped the group place a “devil” on the shoulders of potential recruits “saying kill, kill, kill, kill”.

~snip~

Since October, following Apple’s decision to bolster its mobile-device security, Comey has called for a “debate” about inserting “back doors” – or “front doors”, as he prefers to call them – into encryption software, warning that “ encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place ”.

But Comey and deputy attorney general Sally Quillian Yates testified that they do not at the moment envision proposing legislation to mandate surreptitious or backdoor access to law enforcement. Both said they did not wish the government to itself hold user encryption keys and preferred to “engage” communications providers for access, though technicians have stated that what Comey and Yates seek is fundamentally incompatible with end-to-end encryption.