The leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee speculated on the role that encrypted communications played in Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels that killed at least 31 people and injured more than 200.
“We can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the panel said in a statement hours after news of the bombings broke, before any details about the attackers were known. “We do not know yet what role, if any, encrypted communication played in these attacks,” he added.
Two explosions ripped through a Brussels airport Tuesday morning, and a third bomb was detonated at a metro stop in the city. The attacks came days after authorities in the city nabbed one of the suspected participants in last November’s terror assault in Paris, Salah Abdeslam. Abdelslam had been hiding out in Brussels for the last four months.
Following the Paris attacks and the Dec 2. San Bernardino shootings, anti-encryption advocates on Capitol Hill mobilized. Leadership on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), introduced legislation that would force companies offering cryptographic devices to decrypt data at the request of law enforcement.
Burr noted on Tuesday morning through a social media account that he “will continue to track the events closely as they unfold.” Feinstein said that she “refuse[s] to accept this as the ‘new normal,’” calling on the United States to “use all the tools at our disposal to fight back.”
The anti-cryptology legislative thrusts run parallel to a legal battle unfolding between the FBI and Apple, in which the government is trying to force the tech company to assist in breaking into an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Farook. The procedure could threaten the security of the company’s entire fleet of products, and affect other American outfits that offer encrypted communications services.
The feds are also demanding Apple help hack into other devices unrelated to terrorism investigations, including a gang-related case in Boston and a drug probe in New York.
The government, however, asked a federal judge in California to delay a hearing on the matter scheduled for Tuesday. Although the FBI has long claimed they require Apple’s assistance to break through the company’s default encryption technology, the Justice Department suddenly reversed course Monday night, alleging they may have discovered a new technique to break into secured iPhones.
Earlier this month, President Obama called on tech companies to assent to the demands of law enforcement, and not take an “absolutist” position on the privacy offered by encryption.
“If technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong there’s no key, there’s no door, at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?” the president told an audience gathered at South by Southwest.
“If the government can’t get in, everyone is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket,” Obama claimed.
