Director of the F.B.I. James B. Comey Hints at Action as Cellphone Data Is Locked

WASHINGTON — The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said on Thursday that the “post-Snowden pendulum” that has driven Apple and Google to offer fully encrypted cellphones had “gone too far.” He hinted that as a result, the administration might seek regulations and laws forcing companies to create a way for the government to unlock the photos, emails and contacts stored on the phones.

I am shaking in my boots…

Can’t wait for a PR from Blackphone that states how they adjusted the phone to work according to FBI’s preferences.

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“Just as people won’t put their money in a bank they won’t trust, people
won’t use an Internet they won’t trust,” Brad Smith, the general
counsel for Microsoft, said recently.

Wow.

The guy has made himself a laughing stock.

He admits he has no evidence to support his belief that encryption would have caused harm to past investigations, yet makes policy on that basis.

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Has his head up his ass. FBI clearly needs to be defunded and disbanded.

this whole thing was argued back in the 90’s and they would actually need to change legislation to try to get this done.

in the NY Times articles about this they quote him talking about how US companies might need to take a hit financially. He’s basically asking Americans to choose to make less money… so unAmerican it just won’t happen or else watch overnight all internet services move out of the country.

good luck to him. it’s completely unreasonable for a bureaucrat to tell businessmen that their shareholders are going to have to take a hit for the gov’t. i almost couldn’t stop laughing when i read that…

Yeah, Mr. G-man just keep talking about how encryption keeping you from doing blatantly unconstitutional things is bad…

@dominikz Could be an urban legend but I think the US oil industry got its profit nixed by the Carter admin for at least a decade for its part in the 1970s oil embargo- basically indefinitely nationalized the profit of that industry and it too the Regan admin a second to (unfortunately) reverse that. There is precedent for telling industry to stuff their profit ambitions, just needs a proper public interest basis. Fortunately the business and public interests are aligned on this. But I don’t think this is clear to a lot of people in business. I think it took more of a “don’t be evil,” philosophy to get this. Industry could have just tried to collude to sell the public. I wonder if the EU court ruling helped tip the scale.