President Obama advocated the need for exceptions in the law to breaking encryption in private sector products, the first time he has directly waded into the encryption versus national security debate playing out in the Apple’s legal fight against the federal government.
In a question and answer session at the tech enthusiast South by Southwest conference, Obama warned against taking an “absolutist view” in the debate.
While he argued that he personally believes technology companies should be allowed to keep their encryption methods free from government intervention, he also said there are issues where government needs access, citing child pornography cases and efforts to disrupt terrorist plots.
“My conclusion so far is you cannot take an absolutist view on this,” he told host Evan Smith, the CEO and editor in chief of the Texas Tribune.
Smith avoided asking the president to directly comment on the litigation between Apple and the FBI, which is trying to access the cell phone left behind by the terrorists who launched an attack in San Bernardino in December, killing 14 people.
While the government should not be able to “just willy nilly” break into smartphones full of personal data, he said “there has to be some concession” in certain key cases.
Apple and the FBI are in the middle of a precedent-setting legal tug-of-war over the company’s refusal to help the government break into the iPhone used in the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.
During the same question-and-answer session, Obama admitted that he was really embarrassed when the healthcare.gov website didn’t work.
“You may recall that I signed this law to sign people up for health care called the Affordable Care Act, and uh, and then the website didn’t work,” he deadpanned.
“Heard that, heard that, yeah,” Smith responded.
“And this was a little embarrassing for me, because I was the cool early adapter president and my entire campaign had been premised on having really cool technology and social media and all that,” he said.
He went on to cite the website breakdown as a systematic problem with outdated government technology infrastructure.
“So there’s an example of an outdated system, bloated, risk-averse, not working well,” he said.
Obama then added that he helped turn it around by brining in a “SWAT team of all my friend from Silicon Valley and from Austin – and some of the best engineers in the world to fix it.”
He said he then used the same type of technology “SWAT team” to help the government update its technology across several agencies, including at the Veterans Affairs Department and the Small Business Administration.
