EFF, Access Now, and the White House Sat Down to Talk About Encryption: The Details

In the public battle for strong encryption, EFF has championed the voice of everyday Internet users. After all, if we can’t rely on the security of our digital communications, how can the Web continue to grow and thrive?

Now the fight has moved to the Oval Office. EFF, Access Now, over a dozen nonprofits and tech companies, and over 100,0000 concerned Internet users joined forces to ask President Obama to stand up for uncompromised encryption. 

We definitely got his attention.

In response, representatives of the White House publicly promised to meet with us and solicited even more feedback from the public. After some crossed wires about the meeting, EFF got in contact with White House representatives and we had a long phone conversation with them on Friday. 

Here’s an overview of that conversation: what we said, what they said, and what we asked for. Note that these are just general ideas that were shared, not actual quotes from anybody at the meeting.

Our main concerns

We were very clear with the White House that EFF and Access Now are tired of having the same conversation. We’ve fought long and hard in the courts of law and public opinion to ensure that strong encryption is a mainstay of our networked world, and we’ve been successful. Whatever you call it—“strong” “robust,” or “uncompromised” encryption—it already exists, and it’s here to stay.

And yet, nearly 20 years after EFF’s seminal court case establishing computer code as a form of constitutionally protected speech, the government is still weighing whether and how to force technology companies to create special backdoors. Here is why we urged the White House to put this conversation to bed for good:

Undermining encryption is dangerous and technically infeasible.  Leading security experts published a report this year stating emphatically that undermining encryption—whether through a “front door” or a “back door”—would have dire consequences. In fact, doing so would pose “grave security risks, imperil innovation on which the world’s economies depend, and raise more thorny policy issues than we could have imagined when the Internet was in its infancy.”

We went one step further in our conversation with the White House. We called the debate laughable. It is laughable to suggest that you can create a method for legally sanctioned access and decryption of data that could be safe from abuse by hackers and other malicious actors. It is laughable to the technical community, to academics who have studied the issue, and to the ever-growing community of tech-savvy Internet users worldwide.

Undermining encryption would be ineffective. For years, a handful of law enforcement officials have been touting the idea that backdoors would help boost American security. The problem is, they’re wrong. Compromising the security of our communication tools would affect Internet users across the United States and worldwide, and create an online environment none of us could truly trust. But it wouldn’t do much to stop bad actors, who would simply move overseas or avoid products from American companies that may be subject to government pressure.

America is setting the stage for Internet policy worldwide. If we expect privacy and security for Americans’ communications from foreign governments like China and Russia, then we need to lead the way by showing that democratic countries do not force technology companies to build backdoors. After all, if a tech company will create special access for U.S. law enforcement, how will it be able to refuse other governments?

That’s not just theoretical. We have countless examples of foreign governments seeking access to user content, including the communications of American citizens. In fact, EFF is representing one such American seeking to defend the privacy of his communications against the Ethiopian government.

Strong crypto saves lives. It’s true that we need strong crypto to safeguard everything from indiscrete photos to online shopping transactions. But let’s not forget that for many people, strong crypto is a matter of life