Silicon Valley Giants Double Down on Encryption Backdoors Criticism

Following a proposal that would give law enforcement access to locked and encrypted devices, a coalition of Silicon Valley tech giants, which includes Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Oath among others, has doubled down on its criticism of encryption backdoors, ZDNet is reporting.

Coalition

The tech coalition companies, all of which have been hit by allegations of complicity with the US government’s surveillance efforts, have said in a joint statement that they continue to advocate for strong encryption, and will oppose any attempts to undermine the technology. 

The coalition was formed in 2014 after a slew of classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden pointed to collaboration and cooperation from tech giants and telecom companies in domestic and international surveillance.

Below is the full statement:

“Reform Government Surveillance recently announced a new core principle on encryption that will guide our advocacy efforts, and we continue to believe that strong encryption helps protect the security and privacy of individuals and companies around the world. We have consistently raised concerns about proposals that would undermine encryption of devices and services by requiring so-called “exceptional access” for law enforcement. Recent reports have described new proposals to engineer vulnerabilities into devices and services – but they appear to suffer from the same technical and design concerns that security researchers have identified for years. Weakening the security and privacy that encryption helps provide is not the answer.”

According to security experts and cryptographers, any kind of backdoor can’t be done without it risking being abused or exploited by hackers. 

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