Sessions thinks encryption is great, but authorities need to be able to crack it open whenever they want

Jan 24, 2017 12:27 GMT  ·  By

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, believes strong encryption is absolutely great, as long as authorities have a way to break it.

Completely missing the point on what encryption is about, Jeff Sessions believes that national-security and criminal investigators should be able to bypass such protections. His views seem to be in sync with those of Donald Trump, now President of the United States.

The EFF writes that last year, while the FBI and Apple were fighting over the phone of the San Bernardino shooter, Trump believed that Apple should cooperate and that, otherwise, he would boycott them. “Who do they think they are? No, we have to open it up,” he said, completely missing the point that Apple could not decrypt the phone even if they wanted to because of the way the device was built in the first place and the safety measures set in place.

Two peas in a pod

Trump’s views on encryption, online security and pretty much all things computer-related (aside from Twitter, it seems) are outdated and expose a lack of understanding of the topic at hand. Jeff Sessions’ opinions seem to mirror those of Trump to some extent. While he did not outright talk about this topic during his hearing, giving non-committal answers, he did answer in writing to questions posed by Senator Patrick Leahy.

Asked whether he believes that strong encryption would protect the United States from cyberattack and is beneficial to people’s digital security, Sessions made it pretty clear. “Encryption serves many valuable and important purposes. It is also critical, however, that national security and criminal investigators be able to overcome encryption, under lawful authority, when necessary to the furtherance of national-security and criminal investigations,” he replied.

Therefore, creating backdoors in security features we all trust seems to be what many people want, specifically the Intelligence community. With people such as Sessions given enhanced powers, there’s no way to tell what’s going to happen. Legislation that seeks to weaken cyber protections will surely be opposed.