Federal law enforcement authorities in the U.S., as well as governments worldwide, face a continuing dilemma as a result of encryption, the everyday tool meant to protect our privacy. After the terrible mass murders in Dayton, Ohio, the FBI struggled for days to get into the mobile phone of the shooter to understand what happened and whether others had conspired with him. The same thing happened nearly four years ago after the horrific shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.
Counterterrorism requires prevention and preparedness. But today, identifying threats before they happen is nearly impossible, as extremist groups like Boko Haram and ISIL take advantage of smartphones with encrypted technologies to covertly plot their attacks. Platforms like WhatsApp and Viber help smartphone users keep their personal data private but can also be exploited for nefarious purposes. Like encryption, terrorists and extremists can use the Darknet to mask their communication and propaganda efforts, recruit and radicalize, and gain material benefits in the form of illicit goods, such as weapons and fraudulent documents.
El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord, operated undetected for years by running his cartel using encrypted messages. The investigation into coordinated terrorist attacks in France has quickly turned up evidence that members of the Islamic State (ISIS) communicated with the attackers from Syria using encrypted communications, according to French officials. Al Qaeda has used various forms of encryption to hide files on websites for dissemination, as well as using encrypted or obfuscated files carried on CDs or USB drives by couriers. The organization has heavily used steganography to conceal electronic documents—even files within pornographic videos on websites—rather than relying on e-mail, and has used the technique since before the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said in an interview on CBS’, “I think what we’re going to learn is that these guys are communicating via these encrypted apps, this commercial encryption which is very difficult or nearly impossible for governments to break, and the producers of which don’t produce the keys necessary for law enforcement to read the encrypted messages.”
“Something that concerns not just the FBI but all law enforcement is what we call ‘lawful access.’ Technology companies are deploying encryption software in which the customer can encrypt and only (they) and the end-user can access,” said Luis M. Quesada, special agent in charge of the El Paso Field Office.
Encryption is useful when it comes to protecting private information like banking, he said, but unrestricted use of this technology could pose a threat to the public. “It means we couldn’t follow kidnappings, child pornography, terrorist acts … the lone terrorist shooters which usually communicate through (digital) platforms,” he said. “We want to know if the shooter was communicating with somebody else, if he was being radicalized. It could lead us to somebody else to prevent the next event. Or if we arrest a child pornographer we’d like to know who he’s communicating with so we have a map of who he’s (talking to) and save more kids,” Quesada said.
Intelligence agencies are considerering variety of measures and technologies . Calls have been made by governments to allow ‘backdoors’ to encryption in apps such as Telegram. A joint statement from leaders in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S., collectively known as the Five Eyes, outlines the “urgent need” for law enforcement to overcome this gap, explaining: “The inability of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to lawfully access encrypted data and communications poses challenges to law enforcement agencies’ efforts to protect our communities.”
The FBI has called for laws mandating encryption backdoors, but these laws would be mostly futile. They do not apply to software or phones created in other countries, for example. They do not apply to jihadist programmers who create their own apps based on open-source software. This is why many in the intelligence community, such as former head of the NSA Michael Hayden, oppose backdoors
While end-to-end encryption itself difficult to break , intelligence agencies have been able to hack the software on the ends and take advantage of users’ mistakes. The NSA’s vast compute power will not be dedicated to complex encryption algorithms but to the rather simpler task of guessing terrorist’s passwords.
Advances in lawful interception tools mean government agencies with a sworn duty to protect civilians can overcome encryption to access vital intelligence so criminals can’t plot behind an impregnable wall. These technologies can and have prevented tragedies, with the public undisturbed. Moreover, they are designed for careful, highly targeted and limited use, making surveillance less invasive but more effective than ever before.
Intelligence agencies are also looking to Quantum computers that shall bring power of massive parallel computing i.e. equivalent of supercomputer to a single chip. They shall also be invaluable in cryptology and rapid searches of unstructured databases. The spy agencies are now giving thrust to development of Quantum computers which can break this encryption used by terrorists.
IDST Monthly Access Membership Required
You must be a IDST Monthly Access member to access this content.