Privacy and security is a subject that has been talked about a lot lately, especially in the wake of the Apple vs FBI court case that saw requests for Apple to help the government agency decrypt the iPhones used in the San Bernadino attacks. Despite the FBI’s efforts, Apple wouldn’t budge and refused to decrypt the data regardless of the reason the reason, prompting technology companies to support Apple in the favor of privacy for the user. Google’s own Hiroshi Lockheimer shared thoughts on the court case back in the middle of February. Apple’s refusal to help didn’t matter much in the end as the FBI made another attempt to get into the iPhone without Apple’s help and succeeded, but this wouldn’t be the end of government agencies requesting help from companies like Google and Apple to unlock phones, and there is now a new push to approve legislation that would make it easier for federal judges to make requests for help in phone data decryption.
In a recent report today, it’s been said that the White House would not be publicly supporting this legislation that would give federal judges the power to order the assistance from tech companies in these particular matters. The legislation is being proposed by Senator Richard Burr potentially this week, although no dates are given on when exactly Burr will present his plan.
While the report states that the White House will not be supporting Burr’s efforts, it does mention that the administration has had the chance to review the legislation proposal, which is said to contain no details on how agencies should react or respond to technology companies if they were to refuse to comply with the requested orders for cracking any data. It also reportedly gives no description of how companies would share access to the data with agencies requesting it nor is there any indication of what would give agencies the right to order companies provide such data. In addition to the White House’s reported stance on the encryption legislation set to make its presentation debut soon, Obama spoke out last month on how no one should take an absolute position on encryption, urging caution on leaning too far one way or the other.