EFF Tells Obama Encryption Not Something Only a Few 'Good Guys' Can Use
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is urging President Barack Obama to listen to academics, mathematicians, security engineers and his own advisers who say a back door to unlock encrypted data can't be used only by the "good guys." "You can’t put…
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a key under a doormat that only the FBI will ever find," wrote EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman in a blog post Friday, referring to the legal fight between Apple and the U.S. government over unlocking the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, mass shooters (see 1603010013). She wrote that it's "not possible" to secure encryption back doors that can be accessed by "the smallest number of people possible," which Obama recommended in a talk at the South by Southwest festival in Austin (see 1603110082). She said "crypto-critics like FBI Director James Comey, the attorney general, and others" don't appreciate the technical consequences of what they're proposing, which could be exploited by hackers, identity thieves, authoritarian governments and corporations, compromising everyone's security. "The public debate we’re having over the security of our devices boils down to a question of math versus politics," she added.