Strong Encryption Considered Urgent Public Safety Issue

Atheer – External Sources

According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the fact that the FBI is not able to access electronic devices due to strong encryption is an urgent public safety issue.

According to IT Pro Portal, speaking at a recent cyber-security conference in New York, the FBI director said that the bureau was unable to access almost 7,800 devices in the past year, despite having obtained the legal rights to do so.

Wray explained that this impacts all areas of the FBI’s work. “It couldn’t access data on more than half of devices it tried to unlock, all due to strong encryption. This is an urgent public safety issue.”

The battle between electronic device manufacturers and law enforcement agencies is a long one, having been going on ever since the San Bernardino attack in 2015, with the FBI having trouble unlocking the attacker’s iPhone.

Device manufacturers argue that removing strong encryption, or adding a backdoor to their devices would only serve to empower hackers and put customers’ data at risk. On the other hand, the FBI claims that not having access to these devices makes maintaining security a harder task.

“We face an enormous and increasing number of cases that rely heavily, if not exclusively, on electronic evidence.”