FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed at a recent hearing that the bureau has faced significant hurdles in accessing encrypted data from the digital devices of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspect in the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. While the FBI has retrieved some content, many encrypted communications remain inaccessible.
During the hearing, Wray emphasized the difficulty posed by encrypted platforms such as Signal, WhatsApp, and Proton Mail, which protect messages so only the sender and recipient can view them. “The FBI complains about going dark. When you look at the statistics on how often they intercept communications, this is the golden age of surveillance,” said Greg Nojeim, a lawyer at the Center for Democracy and Technology, during a virtual meeting hosted by Demand Progress.
Wray stated that accessing Crooks’s phone was a technical challenge, and the encryption on messaging applications added to the complexity. “We have been able to get into and exploit a number of electronic devices, digital devices but not all of them yet,” Wray said. “Some of them we may never get access to because of the encryption issue.”
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate informed lawmakers that the FBI had initiated a “legal process” with 30 companies and was waiting for responses from 18, including encrypted platforms, related to the Crooks investigation.
Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, expressed concern over the FBI’s history of attempting to break through encrypted platforms. “Given the FBI’s long history of working to undermine end-to-end encryption, it’s very likely they will ask the next president to help them do it,” Hammado said.
Former Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who joined the privacy meeting, referenced the 2015 San Bernardino shooting case where the FBI sought Apple’s assistance to unlock an iPhone. Although Apple resisted, the FBI eventually accessed the phone through a third party, Azimuth Security. In Crooks’s case, the FBI used Cellebrite, an Israeli firm.
Noah Chauvin, a law professor at Widener University, noted law enforcement’s ongoing efforts to pressure encryption platforms to create backdoors for government access. Goodlatte warned that such backdoors could introduce security vulnerabilities, making data accessible to foreign adversaries and criminal organizations.
The privacy advocates discussed legislative measures to protect encryption, including an amendment by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) to prohibit FBI funding for efforts to undermine encryption. This amendment, part of a congressional appropriations bill, will be addressed after the August recess.
The debate over digital privacy and law enforcement’s access to encrypted data is expected to continue, with significant implications for both security and privacy as Congress prepares to tackle these issues.
