[Infowarrior] - The 90s and Now: FBI and its Inability to Cope with Encryption

[Richard Forno]

October 29, 2014 | By Amul Kalia
The 90s and Now: FBI and its Inability to Cope with Encryption

Recently, FBI Director James B. Comey, along with several government officials, have issued many public statements regarding their inability to catch criminals due to Apple and Google offering default encryption to their consumers.

We at EFF have been around long enough to see these nearly identical statements being made in the past, and have simultaneously witnessed law enforcement agencies not rendered obsolete. In fact, we’ve seen the exact opposite. The tools available to the law enforcement today are expansive and are much scarier, and require close scrutiny to ensure that civil liberties of millions of people are not jeopardized in the process of catching a few bad guys.

But we certainly felt a bit of déjà vu when we saw current FBI Director Comey’s statements, since they sound eerily like the sentiments expressed by then FBI Director Louis J. Freeh in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 1997.  Specifically:

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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/90s-and-now-fbi-and-its-inability-cope-encryption

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