FBI: Combining strong encryption and giving us access is possible

The FBI does not believe that it is impossible to have strong encryption on the one hand and a way for companies to provide access to encrypted data on the other.

FBI CEO Christopher Wray emphasized in a presentation at Boston College last week that the private sector must help with the problem that the intelligence service is increasingly encountering strong encryption. In 2017, the FBI failed to recover the contents of 7,800 devices through encryption. This would be more than half of all devices that wanted to access the service.

The private sector’s help is necessary, he says: “They need to respond to court orders, in a way that respects the law and strong cybersecurity. We must and will have both.” He then stated that innovation is needed, but he does not believe that it is impossible to have both. He did not provide details about what that combination should look like.

Experts agree that it is fundamentally impossible for companies to allow the FBI to bypass encryption without weakening that encryption or building in backdoors. Such undermining of encryption undermines its use as an effective tool to protect data, the researchers said.