In a December 27, 2015, op-ed in the Washington Post, U.S. Representative Mike McCaul (R-TX) and U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) called for the creation of a Federal Security and Technology Commission (FSTC), writing, bi-partisanly:
“That is
why we are proposing a national commission on security and technology
challenges in the digital age.”
A core
issue for consideration by the putative FSTC would certainly be the question of
whether law enforcement and federal surveillance agencies should have access,
however fettered, to materials encrypted by users of powerful “end-to-end” and
on-device encryption.
This is a
another way of saying that the FSTC
might be called upon to decide if vendors could offer such “end-to-end” and
on-device encryption systems only if they build in a “back-door” key and give
it to the government.
Richard Burr is the Republican Chair, and Diane Feinstein, and Ron Wyden
are influential Democratic members of the United States Senate Select Commission on Intelligence (SSCI), which oversees the nation’s surveillance agencies.
Etopia
News has reached out
to each of these senators, asking their views on the establishment of a Federal
Security and Technology Commission and on whether “end-to-end” and on-device
encryption should be prohibited unless the government is given “back-door”
access. Similar questions have also been posed to Democratic presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Etopia
News will report
their comments as they come in.
For a
compendium of comments by Senator Feinstein, who is the Vice Chair of the SSCI, and Senator Burr, regarding “end-to-end
encryption” in the immediate aftermath of the November terrorist attack in
Paris, click here.
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