Privacy advocates call renewed discussion cynical and say government ‘back door’ access to secure communications would doubtless be used by terrorists

As the world continues to absorb the full impact of the murders of civilians by Islamic State attackers in Paris, officials on both sides of the Atlantic have renewed a discussion that many thought had been closed: whether or not to allow government agencies “back-door” access to the codes used to secure communications and financial and personal medical information.

US and European officials have been quick to indict technology for the attacks – although they have yet to show how, or if, technology contributed. CIA director John Brennan, whose own personal email account was recently breached by hackers, attributed the recent popularity of secure communications to “a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists”, and said the effect had been to make the CIA’s ability to locate people “much more challenging”.



On Tuesday evening, senator Tom Cotton introduced a bill that would extend the deadline on the National Security Agency’s bulk surveillance program, called “likely unconstitutional” by a Federal judge last week and due to expire at the end of the month.

North Carolina senator Richard Burr offered the fact that the attacks had surprised intelligence services as proof that the killers had used encrypted communications. He called for the government to review encryption. Burr has also demanded the government shut out Syrian immigrants fleeing Isis in response to the Isis attacks.

“We can’t tell you today specifically that they were using a specific encrypted platform. We think that’s a likely communication tool because we didn’t pick up any direct communication,” he said at a press conference. Both Brennan and Burr used the term “wakeup call” to describe the attacks, though neither offered any evidence of their assertions.

Bill Bratton, head of the New York police department, told MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle that the department’s ability to monitor locals had been hampered by encryption. “We have a huge operation in New York City working closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force where we’re monitoring and they go dark, because basically they go onto an encrypted app, they’re going onto sites that we can’t access.”

“Going dark” is another phrase favored by encryption opponents in the government.

Privacy advocates have called the renewed discussion of encryption back doors inexcusably cynical and said that back door access would doubtless be used immediately by criminals and indeed terrorists.

“A sophisticated terrorist organization will be thrilled at the presence of weakened encryption and backdoors into encryption, because we know from every reputable computer scientist that there’s no safe way to do it that will not be vulnerable to hackers,” said Lauren Weinstein, a privacy advocate who worked on Arpanet, the ancestor of the modern internet. “We’re talking about the same government that’s proven itself unable to protect the information of its own citizens, and we’re not talking a few people; we’re talking millions.”

“We were shocked and saddened to learn of the attacks in Paris and Beirut,” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation executive director Cindy Cohn, saying backdoors would “inevitably” be used for illicit purposes. “But these heinous attacks must not be used to justify further erosion of our security, civil liberties or privacy.”

Misreporting on the nature of the PlayStation console and an anonymous quote from “a senior European counterterrorism official” in the New York Times that the attackers had used encrypted devices (the Times said the interviewee “offered no evidence” for the claim) have helped reignite the debate over encryption.



Law enforcement and intelligence services are sounding the alarm about a host of applications, among them services like Telegram and WhatsApp, which adopted end-to-end encryption in January after a series of embarrassing breaches.

But Jan Jambon, a Belgian politician, said last week at a conference before the attacks that “the most difficult communication between these terrorists is the PlayStation 4, not only for Belgian services but for international services to decrypt.” This does not appear to be the case – PlayStation’s party chat feature does not advertise end-to-end encryption, nor does it appear to be a particularly safe platform for clandestine communications.

The company has made headlines several times in recent years over security breaches. Indeed, Sony specifically prohibits using its services to communicate illegal material and says it will happily pass user information on to the police. “Sony will cooperate with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing Sony to disclose the identity of anyone posting such materials,” the company writes in its terms of service.

Earlier this month, FBI general counsel James Baker said the FBI had given up on encryption back doors. “It’s tempting to try to engage in magical thinking and hope that the amazing technology sector we have in the United States can come up with some solution,” he admitted, calling the notion that back doors might be safe “magical thinking”.

Weinstein said that there was simply no way to make a backdoor “key” that only worked for the “good guys”.

“If there was a scientifically provable way to do this, we could have the discussion, but it doesn’t make sense to have the discussion when everybody who’s looked at this and is honest about it says that it would make us more vulnerable when those systems are subverted,” he said.

“Magical thinking is a really good term for this. They say, ‘Golly gee, if only!’ That if-only doesn’t exist.”

Apple, by contrast, does provide highly encrypted communications, notably iMessage, and without apology. CEO Tim Cook has likened encryption backdoors to leaving a key under the doormat. “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too,” said Cook in a speech in June. “Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people’s accounts. If they know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.” Apple has not changed its position on the matter.

Former deputy director of the CIA Michael Morrell said on Sunday’s Face the Nation that the last debate on cybersecurity “was defined by Edward Snowden”. Now, he believes the coming discussion will be “defined by what happened in Paris”.



Experts in the tech world say that the kinds of encryption likely useful to organizations like Isis are in fact more sophisticated than the mainstream cryptography used by the large tech companies like Apple and Google, which have been the foremost recipients of pressure to provide back doors. Tech companies are also quick to point out that they often comply with reasonable requests from law enforcement.

The White House began a charm offensive in Silicon Valley in April, when newly installed defense secretary Ashton Carter began touring tech companies asking for their direct cooperation, with the tacit threat of legislation mandating governmental access to encrypted communications.

In September the administration said it would not seek legal avenues to mandate encryption back doors, but the White House did endorse the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (co-sponsored by Burr), passed by the Senate just weeks ago, which allows private industry to share user information with the government under a veil of immunity from both regulation and the Freedom of Information Act. Many businesses quietly endorsed the act.

But with renewed calls to weaken cryptography at a moment when data breaches are rampant, the detente between Silicon Valley and the US government appears to be at an end just as relations were beginning to thaw.