Strong encryption means that “darkness is going to grow” until it “changes our world,” the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Congress on Thursday.
“We see … increasing situations where we cannot, with lawful court orders, read the communications of terrorists, gangbangers, pedophiles, all different kinds of bad people,” FBI Director James Comey told a panel of the House Intelligence Committee.
“That affects all of our work. You’ve seen it … most prominently on the counterterrorism side with [the Islamic State], which is reaching into the United States trying to motivate people to either come to their so-called caliphate or kill in the U.S. And when they find someone they think will either come or kill, they move them to a mobile messaging app that’s end-to-end encrypted that we can’t read with court orders,” Comey said.
“Our job is not to tell the American people what to do about it, we’re just here to tell you that there is a big problem, and that darkness is going to grow and grow and grow and change our world,” he added.
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Last week, a federal judge ordered Apple to create software to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by perpetrators of the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. Apple has objected, and company CEO Tim Cook likened the proposed software to a technological “cancer” that would destroy privacy norms.
