FBI wants ‘adult conversation’ on encryption, director says

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

FBI Director James Comey warned again Tuesday about the bureau’s inability to access digital devices because of encryption and said investigators were collecting information about the challenge in preparation for an “adult conversation” next year.

Widespread encryption built into smartphones is “making more and more of the room that we are charged to investigate dark,” Comey said in a cybersecurity symposium.

The remarks reiterated points that Comey has made repeatedly in the past two years, before Congress and in other settings, about the growing collision between electronic privacy and national security.

The Justice Department decided within the past year to not seek a legislative resolution, and some of the public debate surrounding the FBI’s legal fight with Apple Inc. has subsided in the past few months since federal authorities were able to access a locked phone in a terror case without the help of the technology giant. The FBI sought a court order to force Apple to help it hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, a demand the tech giant and other privacy advocates said would dramatically weaken security of its products.

The FBI ultimately got in the phone with the help of an unidentified third party, leaving the legal dispute unresolved. But Comey made clear Tuesday he expects that dialogue to continue.

“The conversation we’ve been trying to have about this has dipped below public consciousness now, and that’s fine,” Comey said at a symposium organized by Symantec, a technology company. “Because what we want to do is collect information this year so that next year we can have an adult conversation in this country.”

The American people, he said, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in private spaces – including houses, cars and electronic devices. But that right is not absolute when law enforcement has probable cause to believe that there’s evidence of a crime in one of those places, including a laptop or smartphone.