Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who’s in a heated race for the Republican nod for a White House election run, said during a forum in South Carolina the pendulum between civil liberties and national security has swung too far in the wrong direction – that what U.S. intelligence agencies need are broader powers.
Specifically, Bush said private technology companies need to cooperate more with the federal authorities to “make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst,” the Hill reported.
He went on: “There’s a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and [the National Security Agency] doing its job. I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way.”
Bush was speaking of the fight between private corporations and the Obama administration and whether law enforcement officials ought to be granted authority to to access encrypted data at the major tech companies.
Critics worry the power could allow law enforcement agents to access private Americans’ information absent the constitutional call to obtain court warrants. Apple CEO Tim Cook, meanwhile, said universal encryption is the way to go in order to prevent even companies from viewing customers’ communications, the Hill reported.
Bush, however, saw a need in this day and age to grant the authority.
“[Encryption] makes it harder for the American government to do its job,” he said, the Hill reported. “[We need] a new arrangement with Silicon Valley [to deal with a] dangerous situation.”
Bush isn’t alone in calling for more cooperation between government and private sector tech firms.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, whose numbers in the polls for president are rising, has pressed for “more collaboration” between private and public sectors on national security matters, at least on a recent Fox News broadcast. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich said companies ought to help the government win the war on terror.
“They want to be patriots,” he said, of businesses, the Hill reported. “Sometimes they need a Sacagawea to guide them through the system.”
