The American Civil Liberties Union‘s quest for records from a Federal Bureau of Investigation unit could shed light on law enforcement’s ability to work around a clash with tech companies over encryption.
Records revealing to what extent the FBI can access encrypted information on its own raise questions about whether tech companies should build into their devices a so-called backdoor for law enforcement to gain access for investigative purposes, as some officials have argued.
“If they don’t need a backdoor, then their argument gets undercut,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory who focuses on ...