We need to crack encryption
Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared his intention to fight a court order requiring Apple to help the FBI with retrieving data from a San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone. While the case revolves on one specific phone, Cook sees the order as being asked “to build a backdoor to the iPhone,” something that is “too dangerous to create.”
Cook is right: This case is bigger than one iPhone. But he’s wrong on the merits. Encrypted phones and communications are a clear and present threat to national security investigations, one that the government has a responsibility to try to break through.
While I support privacy and limits on government intrusion, I have been fundamentally shaped by my almost four years between 2005 and 2009 working as a double agent for the FBI against the Russian military intelligence in the United States. The experience gave me a disturbing look as to how those who wish to do us harm operate, and the challenges and difficulties that law enforcement face in battling them.
Despite the fact that I was passing large amounts of data, the Russians insisted that all our business be done in person. This meant that Oleg, my Russian handler, would let me know the next meeting location by giving me a card or takeout menu for a restaurant. Months later and seemingly out of the blue, he would call my cell phone and ask, “Can you meet for lunch today?”
No matter what I was doing, the answer for me was always yes.
And no matter how much I complained about the short notice and the lack of a simple way to communicate, the Russians showed an absolute refusal to use email, cell phones or text.
At first I thought that the Russian aversion to using technology was because of a lack of sophistication. Now I understand that they believed that electronic communication — as it was then designed — came with a high risk of detection.
The surveillance capabilities of the U.S. were so feared by the Russians, they dictated the tactics they used. Instead of having me email a file, they would rather have a high-ranking diplomat meet me in person to collect my information — physical contact, they believed, was less likely to be compromised than sending an email.
The Russian method of evading detection was analog and in-person; using encrypted messaging is a contemporary digital equivalent. And it makes communications among bad actors many times faster, more convenient and more efficient.
No longer do our enemies have to use the Osama Bin Laden approach of ferrying messages via paper and courier. Now, they can simply text or email from Syria, knowing that intelligence services and law enforcement might see the message, but are powerless to read it.
So unbreakable is this technology that even though the FBI physically has possession of a dead man’s iPhone and a court order to gain access, there is currently no way to access the data on the phone.
If in a static case such as this it may take months of legal maneuvering and building a new technical solution to examine data on a phone for an event that has already passed, how will we possibly ever monitor data of phones in realtime and disrupt plots before an event occurs?
The intelligence community used to arguably have too much information to sort through. Before Edward Snowden’s revelations set off a renaissance in encryption technologies, the capabilities of intelligence agencies to record data was so great that, according to the Intercept’s review of the volume collected by the NSA, it was actually “(causing) information overload.”
We suddenly have far too little. Post- Snowden and with encryption abounding, an NSA inspector general report obtained by The New York Times found that, in the words of The Times, “The government is receiving far less data from Americans’ international Internet communications than privacy advocates have long suspected.”
This is a big problem. A small fraction of terrorist and spy network can be disrupted using human intelligence — people like me. But signals intelligence — peeking in on communications — has always been a vital complement.
To restrict the reading of encrypted communications by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, even with a warrant, is surely not Apple’s intention. Nonetheless, that is exactly what encryption does. It has given our enemies an unintended advantage, allowing them to gain the cyber high ground.
This is no longer simply a question of privacy; it has become one of national security. Which is why If Cook truly has “no sympathy for terrorists,” he cannot ignore the profound danger encrypted devices and applications pose to the defense of our country and the protection of innocent lives.
Bad actors are able to communicate with speed and ease