US President Obama stressed in an interview at the South By Southwest festival the importance of a backdoor for authorities in the encryption of smartphones. He says he sees danger in absolute privacy, but also in full access for investigative services.
President Obama was a guest speaker on Friday at the South by Southwest festival, an annual music, film and media event held in Austin, Texas. Although Obama expressed his view on the current battle between parties that fight for privacy and those who want a backdoor to fight crime and terrorism more easily, the American leader did not address current issues related to this. So he emphatically did not mention the encryption battle that is currently raging between Apple and the FBI.
What Obama did emphasize was that he saw danger in a situation where authorities have absolute, unrestricted access to citizens’ smartphones, but also in a practice in which authorities have no way of obtaining the data of a possible suspect. According to him, a balance between the two interests is a possibility and a necessity. “If it is technologically possible to create an impenetrable system, how are we going to track down the child pornography and the terrorists?” Obama says he concludes that taking an absolute stance on this matter is not possible.
Obama further stated that he feared that if US tech companies did not cooperate with the authorities, a draconian and ill-considered backdoor obligation could be introduced by the US Congress, which he said should be avoided. It is the first time that the US president has spoken so extensively on the issue.
Apple CEO Tim Cook takes that absolute position. He is against building a backdoor in, for example, Apple’s iPhone because such a master key can fall into the hands of parties other than, for example, the American FBI. When that happens, a malicious person could gain access to all the hundreds of millions of devices that this encryption key applies to. Apple’s case against the FBI concerns the iPhone 5c of the man who shot 14 people in San Bernardino in December. The FBI can’t access the data and the organization can’t crack the phone either. Apple would therefore have to develop special firmware to access the data.