Jim Baker was the general counsel of the FBI during its much publicized dispute with Apple over iPhone encryption. He now says public officials should become “among the strongest supporters of widely available strong encryption”:
I know full well that this approach will be a bitter pill for some in law enforcement and other public safety fields to swallow, and many people will reject it outright. It may make some of my former colleagues angry at me. I expect that some will say that I’m simply joining others who have left the government and switched sides on encryption to curry favor with the tech sector in order to get a job. That is wrong. My dim views about cybersecurity risks, China and Huawei are essentially the same as those that I held while in government. I also think that my overall approach on encryption today—as well as my frustration with Congress—is generally consistent with the approach I had while I was in government.
I have long said—as I do here—that encryption poses real challenges for public safety officials; that any proposed technical solution must properly balance all of the competing equities; and that (absent an unlikely definitive judicial ruling as a result of litigation) Congress must change the law to resolve the issue. What has changed is my acceptance of, or perhaps resignation to, the fact that Congress is unlikely to act, as well as my assessment that the relevant cybersecurity risks to society have grown disproportionately over the years when compared with other risks.
Rethinking Encryption
In a nutshell: strong encryption is already widely available (not just in the U.S.), we’re probably already in a golden age of surveillance, weak cybersecurity is a bigger problem, and…. China.