Justice Department Revives Push To Mandate a Way To Unlock Phones (nytimes.com)

"FBI and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on approaches to provide such 'extraordinary access' to encrypted devices," reports The New York Times (alternative source), citing people familiar with the matter. Justice Department officials believe that these "mechanisms allowing access to the data" exist without weakening the devices' security against hacking. Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the report: Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said. The FBI has been agitating for versions of such a mandate since 2010, complaining that the spreading use of encryption is eroding investigators' ability to carry out wiretap orders and search warrants -- a problem it calls "going dark." The issue repeatedly flared without resolution under the Obama administration, peaking in 2016, when the government tried to force Apple to help it break into the iPhone of one of the attackers in the terrorist assault in San Bernardino, Calif. The debate receded when the Trump administration took office, but in recent months top officials like Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, have begun talking publicly about the "going dark" problem. The National Security Council and the Justice Department declined to comment about the internal deliberations. The people familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioning that they were at a preliminary stage and that no request for legislation was imminent. But the renewed push is certain to be met with resistance.

Comments

Impossible

[b0s0z0ku]

This is basically impossible without banning general-purpose computing devices entirely. Even if phones have a backdoor, what's to stop someone from loading a Linux variant designed outside the US onto a laptop and using it for secure communications?

Entirely banning "unhackable" communication would require a walled garden that looks more like Alcatraz for every single compute device sold in the world.

Re: They want this

[Anonymous Coward]

I donâ(TM)t know the answer to how we fix it, but I do know that the attack on the second amendment makes taking the rest of our rights away easier for them.

Re: They want this

[arth1]

I donÃ(TM)t know the answer to how we fix it, but I do know that the attack on the second amendment makes taking the rest of our rights away easier for them.

Not really. When have 2nd amendment proponents ever done anything to protect people's privacy rights? I don't see them protesting data collection or the right to free thought, and certainly not using their weapons against any oppressor.
If anything, it appears to be the 2nd amendment riders who want panopticon state, with suppression of views and freedoms they don't like. Show me a gun liberty group that will pick up their weapons and stand up for rights of people like homosexuals, atheists or ethnic minorities...

NAS picked some shining lights for this

[93 Escort Wagon]

”They included Ray Ozzie, a former chief software architect at Microsoft; Stefan Savage, a computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego; and Ernie Brickell, a former chief security officer at Intel.”

I can’t speak to Professor Savage’s expertise; but just having these particular guys from Intel and Microsoft involved should scare the crap out of you.