Encryption Battle Escalates With New Senate Proposal

Tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley may heat up with the circulation of the latest proposal from lawmakers that would force private companies to unlock encrypted devices and technology at the request of a court order.

As The Wall Street Journal reported late on Wednesday (April 13), Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Vice Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein are requesting input on the proposed legislation. The encryption rules would aim to settle the ongoing debate on how to address the government’s request for backdoor access to the technologies designed to safeguard private data in the case of national security or law enforcement purposes.

The proposed legislation states that if a court order is served, firms will be required to turn over the requested information or data or provide assistance to the law enforcement agency as is necessary to retrieve the encrypted material the government seeks, WSJ reported.

The 10-page “discussion draft” also states that companies must provide assistance if the sought-after information or data “has been made unintelligible by a feature, product, or service owned, controlled, created, or provided by the covered entity or by a third party on behalf of the covered entity.”

“I have long believed that data is too insecure and feel strongly that consumers have a right to seek solutions that protect their information — which involves strong encryption,” Burr stated. “I do not believe, however, that those solutions should be above the law.”

Though the proposal still has a long way to go before it could be adopted, the fact that such a notable change to the law has taken place has the potential to put many tech firms on high alert.

Microsoft is reportedly going on the offensive in its fight against being forced to adhere to revealing surveillance by the government.

The software company is suing the Department of Justice in an effort to challenge its ongoing use of secrecy orders that bar Microsoft from telling its customers when a warrant is issued by the government to read their private email messages, The New York Times reported on Thursday (April 14).

The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Seattle, states that the gag order statute within the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 is unconstitutional because it in turn violates the Fourth Amendment right people have to know of a government search or seizure of property. Microsoft also states that the statute harms its own First Amendment right to speak freely to its customers.

In an interview with NYT, Microsoft President and chief legal officer Bradford L. Smith said “People should not lose their rights just because they are storing their information in the cloud.”