(Washington Post) FBI Director James Comey is urging Congress to take up the topic of encryption -- setting up a potentially historic debate on Capitol Hill over whether U.S. tech firms can be required to bake into their technology ways for law enforcement to legally access users' e-mails, texts and other digital communications.
In remarks at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, Comey used the phrase "going dark" to describe the decisions by companies like Apple and Google to encrypt by default more and more of their services. (Comey recalled his response when he learned of those decisions: "Holy cow.") The problem, Comey argued, is that the process locks away for good some data that could be useful to law enforcement as it fights crime.
