Story highlights Mike Rogers: U.S. tech companies should keep a key to encrypted communication

We don't have to sacrifice Fourth Amendment protections to fix encryption issue, he says

Former representative Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2011 to 2015, is host of the Westwood One radio program "Something to Think About," a CNN national security commentator and an adviser to cybersecurity and technology companies. The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) Back in the 1970s and '80s, Americans asked private companies to divest from business dealings with the apartheid government of South Africa. In more recent years, federal and state law enforcement officials have asked -- and required -- Internet service providers to crack down on the production and distribution of child pornography. And banks and financial institutions are compelled to prevent money laundering by organized crime and terrorists finance networks.

All of this is against companies' bottom-line business interests, but it has been in the public interest. These actions were taken to protect the public and for the greater good. And all of it was done to mitigate a moral or physical hazard.

Take another example: Many communities implement landlord responsibility ordinances to hold them liable for criminal activity on their properties. This means that landlords have certain obligations to protect nearby property owners and renters to ensure there isn't illicit activity occurring on their property. Property management companies are typically required to screen prospective tenants. Just this spring, a family was awarded $12 million in damages against a property management company that failed to screen tenants prior to a shooting in the development.

The point of all these examples? That state and federal laws routinely act in the interest of public safety at home and abroad. Yet now, an emerging technology poses a serious threat to Americans -- and Congress and our government have failed to address it.

Technology companies are creating encrypted communication that protects their users' privacy in a way that prevents law enforcement, or even the companies themselves, from accessing the content. With this technology, a known ISIS bomb maker would be able to send an email from a tracked computer to a suspected radicalized individual under investigation in New York, and U.S. federal law enforcement agencies would not be able to see ISIS's attack plans.

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