https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-ability-to-unlock-encryption-is-not-a-fatal-security-flaw/2015/09/10/6dd0ac8e-57fc-11e5-8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html
By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post
September 10, 2015
In the tug of war between the government and U.S. companies over whether
firms should hold a key to unlock encrypted communications, a frequent
argument of technologists and privacy experts is that maintaining such a
key poses a security threat.
But on Thursday, FBI Director James B. Comey pointed out that a number of
major Internet companies do just that “so they can read our e-mails and
send us ads.”
And, he said: “I’ve never heard anybody say those companies are
fundamentally insecure and fatally flawed from a security perspective.”
Comey was airing a new line of government argument in the year-old public
debate over the desirability of compelling Internet companies to provide a
way for law enforcement to have access to decrypted communications.
Although he didn’t name names, he was alluding to major e-mail providers
Google and Yahoo, which both encrypt customers’ e-mails as they fly
between servers, but decrypt them once they land in order to scan them and
serve customers relevant ads.
Comey, who spoke at a cyberthreats hearing held by the House Intelligence
Committee, has been a leading voice advancing the concerns of law
enforcement that the growing trend of strong encryption — where devices
and some communications are encrypted and companies do not hold the keys
to decode them — will increasingly leave criminal investigators in the
dark.
[...]
--
Evident.io - Continuous Cloud Security for AWS.
Identify and mitigate risks in 5 minutes or less.
Sign up for a free trial @ https://evident.io/
