– No back doors –
Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford University Centre for Internet and Society, said the FBI argument overlooks the fact US tech firms must compete in the global marketplace.
“Global customers do not want backdoored products any more than Americans do, and with very good reason,” Granick writes on the “Just Security” blog.
“Authoritarian countries like Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia want to censor, spy on, and control their citizens’ communications. These nations are just as able to make demands that Apple and Google decrypt devices as the FBI is, and to back up those demands with effective threats.”
On balance, she said, “the public is more secure, not less secure, with the wide use of strong cryptography – including cryptography without back doors.”
Mike Janke, chief executive of the firm Silent Circle which makes the fully encrypted Blackphone, said the FBI is making a “false cry” against Google and Apple because the law enforcement agency can easily gain access to a phone – through a carrier tap, or location tracking, for example.
Greater privacy, Janke said, comes from the harder encryption on Blackphone, but law enforcement can still track a user’s location as long as the battery is inside.
While a small number of people may use encryption for nefarious purposes, Janke said, “do you sacrifice the privacy and trade secrets of everyone else because of that?”
