If you think you are struggling as a business to keep up with technology, and are suffering from doses of “Shadow IT” and “consumerisation” as a result, well spare a thought for US Federal law enforcement and intelligence authorities.
Well if you can that is. According to an article by the Washington Post, FBI officials are “increasingly struggling” to conduct court-ordered wiretaps on suspects because of the sophistication of communication methods. Because of the technical developments of online communication, the FBI is not able to fulfil a “large percentage” of wiretap orders on suspected spies and foreign agents. The same problem is also plaguing law enforcement agents in criminal cases; agents, as they are often declining to seek orders when they know firms lack the means to tap into a suspect’s communications in real time.
In 2013, it was reported that judges authorised 3,600 federal and state criminal wiretaps and 1,588 foreign intelligence surveillance orders. In many of them, law enforcement said the inability to fully execute the orders hampered their investigations.
In fact it is so prominent, that FBI officials have called the problem “going dark”. So the question is can technology’s stampede forward be actually harming those trying to prosecute, and protect those who are evading capture?
Combined with a greater wariness about Government surveillance, and a simple choice between cracking encryption, or more work with the private sector – again a sector not especially known for its willingness to deal with the Government in light of the surveillance revelations – the FBI is in quite a quandary. FBI General Counsel James A. Baker said: “All we’re trying to say is, in the world today, we’re facing this problem. We don’t have a solution. We have a problem that is real and is impacting the lives of real people, of victims of crime, on a daily basis.”
The article claimed that of the near 4,000 companies in the US who provide some form of communication service, a “significant portion” are not required by law to make sure their platforms are wiretap-ready.
So the question that has to be asked is, if the world’s leading super power and home of the main technology industry is struggling, why has it not called upon its own expertise. After all, it happened in 1999 when the senate called in members of the L0pht, so why are the world’s top cryptographers being drafted into DC to solve this problem? After all messers Diffie, Hellman, Schneier and Zimmermann are all American born, or are they not so keen?
The article claimed that in 1994, Congress mandated that all phone companies make their systems wiretap-ready, but this not only poses security risks to foreign attackers, but as Richard “Dickie” George, former technical director at NSA, told the WP: “When you’re building in a back door, you’re building in an ability to give away information that’s supposed to be protected.”
I think the solution lies close to home in the US, on the west coast, north east and in nearby Maryland, where some brilliant minds live and work. Getting them to contribute may be the biggest challenge bearing in mind the last NSA/private sector relationship ended in pretty bad publicity.
