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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Intercept reports on an email obtained by the Washington Post: Top [Intelligence] Lawyer Says Terror Attack Would Help Push for Anti-Encryption Legislation [theintercept.com]:

The intelligence community's top lawyer, Robert S. Litt, told colleagues in an August email obtained by the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] that Congressional support for anti-encryption legislation "could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement." So he advised "keeping our options open for such a situation."

[...] A senior official granted anonymity by the Post acknowledged that the law enforcement argument is "just not carrying the day." He told the Post reporters: "People are still not persuaded this is a problem. People think we have not made the case. We do not have the perfect example where you have the dead child or a terrorist act to point to, and that's what people seem to claim you have to have."

On Tuesday [theintercept.com], Amy Hess, a top FBI official, told reporters that the bureau has "done a really bad job collecting empirical data" on the encryption problem. FBI Director James Comey has attempted to provide examples of how law enforcement is "going dark," but none have checked out [theintercept.com]. Only Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has been able to provide an example [theintercept.com] of encrypted technology maybe blocking one possible lead in a murder investigation.

In other news, the EFF has issued its first certificate [eff.org] as part of the Let's Encrypt [letsencrypt.org] initiative. Microsoft researchers have published a paper [iacr.org] and code [microsoft.com] (MIT license) for FourQ, a new and faster [theregister.co.uk] elliptic curve cryptography implementation. Cryptome's [cryptome.org] John Young has announced that some of his public PGP keys have been compromised [theregister.co.uk].

Related:

June 7: FBI Official: "Build Technological Solutions to Prevent Encryption Above All Else" [soylentnews.org]
July 30: Ex-Intelligence Officials Support Encryption in Editorial [soylentnews.org]
September 10: Justice Department Considered Suing Apple Over iMessage Encryption [soylentnews.org]

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