Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is going to bat for civil liberties against the overreaching British government.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that British authorities ordered Apple to give them a backdoor to the encrypted data of Apple users. “The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies,” reported Joseph Menn for the Post.
Requiring tech companies to create a backdoor necessarily compromises the security of their own products. Even if created for “the good guys,” backdoors can also be taken advantage of by bad faith actors. After all, compromised security is compromised security.
As explained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, just a few months ago, a Chinese government-linked hack of systems for companies like AT&T and Verizon was facilitated in part by backdoors created by those companies for American law enforcement. “This gave China unprecedented access to data related to U.S. government requests to these major telecommunications companies,” they noted. This even included the tapping of calls from now-President Trump.
It’s also always a bad precedent for tech companies to bend the knee to governments, any governments really, and create a backdoor. Inevitably, less trustworthy governments will have access to those same backdoors.
And in this case, really, who are the British to be demanding that an American company compromise the security of everyone, including Americans, just because British authorities want them to?
Soon after her swearing in, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, reached out to Gabbard to ask her to tell the United Kingdom to retract its demand.
“If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up in Americans’ phones, tablets, and computers, undermining the security of Americans’ data, as well as of the countless federal, state and local government agencies that entrust sensitive data to Apple products,” they wrote.
On Tuesday, she sent a response to the lawmakers saying she will ensure American liberties are protected. “I share your grave concern about the serious implications of the United Kingdom, or any foreign country, requiring Apple or any company to create a ‘backdoor’ that would allow access to Americans’ personal encrypted data,” she wrote. “This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.”
We echo the folks at EFF on this: “We appreciate Apple’s stance against the U.K. government’s request. Weakening encryption violates fundamental rights. We all have the right to private spaces, and any backdoor would annihilate that right.”