Granting the United States and Great Britain access to encrypted communications would compromise the security of the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure, an elite group of security technologists concluded.
The group is made up of 14 of the world’s pre-eminent cryptographers and computer scientists from universities such as Columbia, Harvard and MIT, as well as companies like Microsoft and Google.
In their new paper, the group said giving the government “exceptional access” to encrypted communications was technically unfeasible and would leave data and infrastructure like banks and the power grid at risk, the New York Times reported.
Moreover, authorities could not be trusted to keep such communications safe from hackers and cyber criminals, the group said, as evidenced by the recent hack of the US Office of Personnel Management.
“Such access will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend,” the report said.
“The costs would be substantial, the damage to innovation severe and the consequences to economic growth hard to predict. The costs to the developed countries’ soft power and to our moral authority would also be considerable.”
The report was deliberately issued a day before FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. and Sally Quillian Yates, of the US Justice Department, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on concerns that encryption will prevent them from effectively doing their jobs, the Times reported.
Encryption opponents argue that it thwarts the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to track terrorists and other threats. British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban encrypted messages altogether.
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