Washington (AFP)
The US government on Friday urged tech giants to look for a "technical solution" to ensure law enforcement can have access to encrypted data in case of serious crimes.
In the wake of a call directly to Facebook's boss, who ran into a wall, Justice Minister Bill Barr returned to the charge, this time addressing the entire sector.
"We are sure that there are technical solutions that would guarantee legal access without weakening the security of encryption," he told a conference in Washington on the problems posed by encrypted email in the fight against corruption. pedophilia or terrorism.
"It is time for the industry to give up its untenable position that it is useless to look for" this solution, he added, denying claiming "a back door".
The term refers to faults introduced without the knowledge of a user, either by a third party or by the developer, who give a secret access to the software, to monitor or control it. Technology companies oppose this in the name of respect for the privacy of their users.
Conversely, they offer more and more instant messengers with "end-to-end encryption", that is to say where the messages are scrambled and that only the sender and the receiver have the "keys" to read them.
This is already the case of Whatsapp and Facebook now wants to extend this encryption to the popular Messenger application.
But the US government wants the developers to keep a "key" in order to let the police with the necessary permissions, "said Bill Barr.
For the minister, the risk of exploitation of personal data of users is less important than that of seeing criminals operate away from radar.
Noting that major groups make numerous reports to law enforcement, he said: "We hope the industry will remain an ally and not become an adversary."
© 2019 AFP