Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday poured cold water on the idea that the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone would set a new standard for data encryption policy.
Carter took care to “speak more broadly” about the issue of encryption, but he made clear that Apple was on his mind.
“There are limits on what I can say about the case that’s been in the news lately, I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about, particularly because it’s under litigation and it’s a law enforcement matter,” he said Tuesday during a speech in San Francisco, Calif. “First, it’s important to take a step back here, because future policy shouldn’t be driven by any one particular case. Second, encryption is a necessary part of data security and strong encryption is a good thing … .The bottom line is that the tech community and policymakers need to work together to solve these complex challenges, just like they have in the past.”
Carter’s praise of encryption differed somewhat from the position of FBI director James Comey, who is in the middle of a legal battle over the San Bernardino terrorist’s cell phone data that — contrary to previous statements — he allowed could set a precedent for future encryption cases. “I don’t know how lawyers and judges will think about what is the limiting principle on the legal side,” he said.
House and Senate lawmakers are mulling legislative paths to intervene in the fight, and national security hawks on both sides of the aisle are hoping to tip the scales in favor of the FBI. Carter warned against setting policy hastily, though.
“It’s easy to see the wrong ways to go about this. One would be a law hastily written in anger or grief,” he said. “Another would be to have the rules written by Russia or China. That’s why the Department of Defense will continue seeking to work with Bay Area companies, because we’re living in the same world, with the same basic trends and the same basic threats and we must innovate the way forward together.”
When a reporter interpreted Carter to be saying he didn’t “believe that the case against Apple is a very good one,” the defense secretary pushed back. “To be clear, I didn’t address that case at all. And I need to be very, very persnickety about that because it is in litigation. It’s a law enforcement matter,” he said after the speech. “The point I made in the speech is we shouldn’t let the solutions to this larger issue of how to handle data security as a society be driven by any one particular case. I think that’s the important point here.”
