McLaughlin writes: "As the Obama administration
campaign to stop the commercialization of strong encryption heats up, National
Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is firing back on behalf of the
companies like Apple and Google that are finding themselves under attack."
Edward Snowden. (photo: NBC)
Edward Snowden Explains Why Apple Should Continue to
Fight the Government on Encryption
By
Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
31 July 15
As the Obama administration campaign to stop the
commercialization of strong encryption heats up, National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is firing back on behalf of the companies
like Apple and Google that are finding themselves under attack.
“Technologists and companies working to protect
ordinary citizens should be applauded, not sued or prosecuted,” Snowden wrote
in an email.
Snowden was asked by The Intercept to respond
to the contentious suggestion — made
Thursday on a blog that frequently
promotes the interests of the national security establishment — that companies
like Apple and Google might in certain cases be found legally liable
for providing material aid to a terrorist organization because they provide
encryption services to their users.
In his email, Snowden explained how law
enforcement officials who are demanding that U.S. companies build some
sort of window into unbreakable end-to-end encryption — he calls that an
“insecurity mandate” — haven’t thought things through.
“The central problem with insecurity mandates has
never been addressed by its proponents: if one government can demand access to
private communications, all governments can,” Snowden wrote.
“No matter how good the reason, if the U.S. sets the
precedent that Apple has to compromise the security of a customer in response
to a piece of government paper, what can they do when the government is China
and the customer is the Dalai Lama?”
Weakened encryption would only drive people away from
the American technology industry, Snowden wrote. “Putting the most important
driver of our economy in a position where they have to deal with the devil or
lose access to international markets is public policy that makes us less
competitive and less safe.”
Snowden entrusted his archive of
secret documents revealing the NSA’s massive warrantless spying programs all
over the world to journalists in 2013. Two of those journalists — Glenn
Greenwald and Laura Poitras — are founding editors of The Intercept.
Among Snowden’s many revelations are the CIA’s years-long efforts to break
Apple’s security systems, and American and British spy agencies’ theft of a vast trove of
private encryption keys. Snowden himself taught Greenwald the
importance of using strong encryption to protect the materials.
FBI Director James Comey and others have repeatedly stated that law
enforcement is “going dark” when it comes to the ability to track bad actors’
communications because of end-to-end encrypted messages, which can only be
deciphered by the sender and the receiver. They have never provided evidence
for that, however, and have put forth no technologically realistic
alternative.
Meanwhile, Apple and Google are currently rolling out
user-friendly end-to-end encryption for their customers, many of whom have
demanded greater privacy protections — especially following Snowden’s
disclosures.
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