“We’ve had good conversations with the folks in the tech sector”, Comey said Wednesday during a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Leaders in both major political parties have increasingly been calling on tech companies to give law enforcement encryption backdoors in the wake of recent terror attacks in Paris and California. Efforts to fully access the devices are ongoing, officials said.
“Terrorists are using encrypted communications and… very solid cryptography standards that haven’t been broken yet”, said David Kennedy, the CEO of TrustedSec who has worked with the Marine Corps’ cyber-warfare unit and the National Security Agency, in November. “We have to grapple with it”, Comey said.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said she also wanted encryption legislation.
“Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so that judges’ orders can not be complied with for reasons that I understand – I’m not questioning their motivations”.
“That morning before one of those terrorists went to attempt mass murder, he exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist”, he said.
It’s not just Garland, either – the issue of encryption came up again after terrorists affiliated with ISIS carried out attacks across Paris in November, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds more.
“I think this world is really changing in terms of people wanting the protection and wanting law enforcement, if there is conspiracy going on over the Internet, that that encryption ought to be able to be pierced”, Feinstein said.
“That is a big problem”, Comey said.
In an October report for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, ISIS expert J.M. Berger wrote that “Islamic State recruiters often favor messaging applications with strong encryption”.
“That’s for sure” Comey responded. He told Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that “I think there’s no way we solve this entire problem…the sophisticated user could still find a way”.
“It’s affecting every criminal investigation”, he added, saying extremists are “radicalizing in a way that’s hard to see”.
In response Comey appeared to counter his previous statement on the lack of a “technical issue”, and essentially admitted he doesn’t know how companies would comply with the order, but it would be their burden to figure it out.
Encryption has plenty of legitimate uses: It keeps data secure for companies, protects the work of journalists and activists, and even keeps military secrets safe from the bad guys.
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“There are plenty of companies today that provide secure services to their customers and still comply with court orders”, he said.
