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takyon writes:

Another day, another U.S. law enforcement official calling for regulation and weakening of encryption. This time, Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, has told Congress that Internet communication services are helping ISIS/ISIL and other terrorist groups as they are now "Going Dark," and the FBI needs a "front door":

As far as the FBI is concerned, private companies must "build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else," the Washington Post reports Steinbach as saying. That's a pretty sharp reverse ferret from the FBI, which four years ago was recommending encryption as a basic security measure. But Steinbach said evildoers are hiding behind US-made technology to mask their actions.

Steinbach told the committee that encrypted communications were the bane of the agency's efforts to keep the American public safe from terror. But the FBI wasn't insisting on back door access to encryption; rather, it wants companies to work directly with law enforcement where necessary. "Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go," Steinbach said. "We're not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious."

Instead the FBI wants a front door; a system to allow it to break encryption created by US companies. Understandably, US tech firms aren't that keen on the idea, since "we have borked encryption" isn't much of a selling point.

Steinbach claims that while "traditional voice telephone companies are required by CALEA to develop and maintain capabilities to intercept communications when law enforcement has lawful authority, that requirement does not extend to most Internet communications services." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, fought unsuccessfully against the expansion of CALEA in 2004 to cover Internet and some VoIP providers. Efforts to expand CALEA continued in 2010, when the FBI first began to complain about "Going Dark":

In 2010, the FBI began its "Going Dark" campaign. Despite the fact that we are in a Golden Age of Surveillance, the campaign is a charm offensive to convince politicians that FBI is unable to listen in on Internet users' digital communications after obtaining a court order because of recent advances in technology. The proposed legislation would have forced all communications services to build secret backdoors for the government to spy on users and to decrypt any encrypted messages exchanged via the service. The proposal's problems were many, and it quietly died after a tremendous amount of uproar.

In the beginning of 2013, it was reported the FBI was again pushing for a wholesale expansion of CALEA to all Internet communications services. Similar to 2010, the FBI wants to force all companies with messaging services to engineer their products with a secret government backdoor and to decrypt all encrypted messages. The proposal also adds another component: fining companies for not cooperating. In May 2013, the New York Times revealed that the White House was "on the verge" of backing the proposal. While the bill was not introduced in 2013, updating CALEA was a stated priority for FBI Director James Comey in 2014 and we expect it to be so for 2015 as well.