Broad Coalition Urges 'Five Eyes' to Encourage Strong Encryption Usage
Eighty-three individuals and international organizations, including Access Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, R Street Institute and TechFreedom, are urging the "Five Eyes" -- an intelligence alliance comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. -- to facilitate…
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strong encryption development and usage. The alliance's ministers and attorneys general met earlier last week, and issued a joint communique saying "encryption can severely undermine public safety efforts by impeding lawful access to the content of communications during investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism." They wanted to discuss "shared solutions" with communications and technology companies "while upholding cybersecurity and individual rights and freedoms," the communique said. But, in a Friday letter to officials, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, the coalition favoring strong encryption said the alliance's proposal threatened such communications tools. The letter said engineering back doors or other "deliberate weaknesses into commercially available encryption software ... [is] both shortsighted and counterproductive." The coalition said "encryption does far more good than harm."