The new bill prohibits the prohibition of strong cryptography

The FBI continues to lobby for the introduction of a universal backdoor, which will allow the secret services to unlock any mobile phone. The main problem is considered the iPhone.

Apple, although it is an American company, stubbornly refuses to implement such a “key” in iOS and, conversely, only strengthens the defense mechanisms. According to FBI Director James Comey, she unwittingly helps terrorists and criminals: the encrypted iPhone messages "are a problem in our investigations, " he said at a hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 9.

For more than a year, the FBI, the NSA and their colleagues from other special services have been fighting against the introduction of end-to-end encryption by different companies, which they cannot crack. Lobbying also takes place at the state level: California and New York have recently taken legislative steps to weaken cryptography. In both states, they are trying to push through laws that prohibit the use of “communication modes that do not allow law enforcement agencies to access the content if there is a warrant”: the New York bill , the California bill .
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To stop the flow, two US congressmen - Ted Lieu from the Democratic Party and Blake Farenteld from the Republican Party - proposed the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights Bill of Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act of 2016 , which bans individual states repeal strong state cryptography. The rules should be the same for the whole country.

In one of his speeches, James Komi said that cryptographic data protection undermines the work of the FBI. Komi believes that encryption is a “marketing tool” for Apple and Google, but it has very serious consequences in real life, because it allows you to hide important information from the law and avoid punishment of criminals. “We need our private sector partners [Apple and Google] to step back, take a break and consider changing course.”

Komi formally spoke “against backdoors”, proposing instead to introduce a “transparent, understandable procedure”, which he called “front door”.

The White House is also considering the idea of ​​"duplicate accounts" with the separation of keys or multiple keys (a copy of the key will be kept by the state), but so far lobbyists have not put forward such a bill.

Proponents of strong cryptography constantly repeat that the emergence of a universal key or duplicate accounts means the intentional introduction of vulnerabilities into all devices using cryptography: consumer, corporate and government. This is contrary to information security standards.

It’s equally dangerous if each state starts adopting its own encryption standards: “We are deeply concerned that the jumble of different encryption requirements in each state will not only undermine national security - it also threatens the competitiveness of American companies and suppresses innovation,” said Ted Lew. one of the authors of the bill.

Lew is one of the few American congressmen who has a degree in computer science (computer science). He is one of the main defenders of strong cryptography in parliament.

If the bill is not accepted, and the aforementioned laws in New York and California pass, then Apple and others will have to make special “weakened” versions of their smartphones for sale in these territories.