A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is calling for a commission comprised of policymakers and tech leaders to study policy challenges surrounding encryption.
“We cannot wait for the next attack before we outline our options, nor should we legislate out of fear,” House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote in an editorial for the Washington Post on Monday.
“Instead, Congress must be proactive and should officially convene a body of experts representing all of the interests at stake so we can evaluate and improve America’s security posture as technology — and our adversaries — evolve,” the lawmakers add.
The pair pointed to a CNN report quoting anonymous officials who claimed that some of the perpetrators in the Nov. 13 terrorist attack in Paris had encrypted applications on their smartphones, including Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Berlin-based Telegram. “[I]t was revealed that the Paris attackers used hard-to-monitor, encrypted applications to coordinate their acts of terrorism,” the lawmakers wrote.
The officials quoted by CNN did not specify whether the applications, which are commonly used for international texting, were used to coordinate the attacks, though many lawmakers inferred it from the report.
However, in addition to expressing concerns about encryption, the pair also lauded its benefits and expressed skepticism of so-called “backdoors” that would allow law enforcement to bypass it.
“Some have proposed mandating ‘backdoors’ into encrypted platforms so that such messages can be accessed by law enforcement with a lawful warrant. Yet such a law could weaken Internet privacy for everyone and could have the unintended consequence of making our information systems more vulnerable to attack,” McCaul and Warner note.
McCaul, who is hawkish on security issues, has generally been critical of encryption. Monday’s editorial represents a moderate departure from his past rhetoric on the issue.
The commission, they said, “would not be a group of politicians debating one another. We believe the individuals most capable of finding creative ways to protect our security — both public and private — are the stakeholders themselves.”
“Nor would the commission be like other blue-ribbon panels, quickly established but soon forgotten. Rather, it would be charged with generating much-needed data and developing a range of actionable recommendations that can protect privacy and public safety,” they added.
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In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, some lawmakers have called for banning encryption, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Others, like former CIA operative Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, have said it would not help, arguing that it would hurt law-abiding citizens while malefactors simply find new ways to communicate.
