- US President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) in Arlington, Virginia, USA, 13 January 2015.
- EPA/Kristoffer Tripplaar / POOL
President Barack Obama said Friday that police and spies should not be locked out of encrypted smartphones and messaging apps, taking his first public stance in a simmering battle over private communications in the digital age.
Apple, Google and Facebook have introduced encrypted products in the past half year that the companies say they could not unscramble, even if faced with a search warrant. That's prompted vocal complaints from spy chiefs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Obama's comments came after two days of meetings with Cameron, and with the prime minister at his side.
"If we find evidence of a terrorist plot… and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can't penetrate that, that's a problem," Obama said. He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. "They're patriots."
In the U.S., governments have long been able to access the contents of electronic communication, including phone calls, consumer email and social media, typically with warrants, through wiretaps and from technology companies themselves.
But the law that governs these practices is dated and doesn't mandate tech firms incorporate such features into modern apps. In the post-Edward Snowden era, many technology firms have turned encryption and "zero-knowledge" into marketing buzzwords.
The president on Friday argued there must be a technical way to keep information private, but ensure that police and spies can listen in when a court approves. The Clinton administration fought and lost a similar battle during the 1990s when it pushed for a "clipper chip" that would allow only the government to decrypt scrambled messages.
That's a notable shift for the president. "He sounded more like Jim Comey than anything else the White House has said in the past couple of months," said Stewart Baker, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, referring to the FBI director, who has criticized the tech companies' new encryption policies.
Security experts have long argued such systems would hobble many anti-hacking tools, leaving computers exposed. For instance, if an encryption algorithm has a master key, it is inherently weaker because it's possible for an outsider to steal that master key and crack the code.
Obama must now choose between competing priorities: the security of private information, or the ability of law enforcement to gather intelligence, said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Earlier in his remarks Friday, the president talked about new efforts by Britain and the U.S. to fight hackers attacking private sector companies.
"How in the same speech can you talk about taking steps to improve cybersecurity and complain about encryption," Soghoian said.
Baker, the former NSA lawyer, called that argument a "red herring."
"We expect companies to be able to help with this," he said. "That doesn't mean that you always have to write bad cryptography."
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