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It is not just one iPhone, the FBI wants a future where it is impractical to deploy strong encryption without key escrow

Frank Rietta — 03/16/2016

Crypto War II, the first crypto war having taken place in the 90s with the clipper chip, is in full swing with hostilities started back up a few years ago when FBI Director James Comey and others started lobbying congress and giving public speeches about how being unable to unlock some devices and communications makes it hard to do their job. It has been an unrelenting full public relations assault on practical strong encryption.

Ultimately FBI Director James Comey wants a future where it is illegal or impractical to deploy strong encryption without key escrow, which is a key backup system that the great consensus of cryptographers and computer scientists assert is insecure at scale. As a statesman he never comes out and says this directly, but it is the only conceivable outcome to what he is demanding of tech companies before congress and the actions that the FBI has taken in court.

Few companies, actually practically no one, will offer encryption if it is going to cost them tremendous amounts of money and engineer time to hack each and every device on a piecemeal basis. The siren call of key escrow or an alternate decryption key that they maintain will be irresistible. Our secure devices will be less secure. And for organizations and their employees that handle sensitive information, the risk of data breaches resulting from lost or stolen phones, even when encrypted, will increase.

Or the industry will move back in the direction of unencrypted devices, which would be just fine by the FBI but would be ultimately very bad for everyone who keeps sensitive information or accesses sensitive information through apps on their devices.

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