ITI Council: Weakening Encryption To Advance Security “Does Not Make Sense”

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a U.S.-based technology industry group that represents Apple, Google, Microsoft and several other tech companies, issued a statement on Thursday responding to calls to weaken encryption security tools following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

ITI President and CEO Dean Garfield said, “We deeply appreciate law enforcement's and the national security community’s work to protect us, but weakening encryption or creating backdoors to encrypted devices and data for use by the good guys would actually create vulnerabilities to be exploited by the bad guys, which would almost certainly cause serious physical and financial harm across our society and our economy. Weakening security with the aim of advancing security simply does not make sense.”

In a statement released to Reuters, the Garfield said that after a dreadful tragedy like the Paris attacks, we naturally search for solutions, but weakening encryption is not one.

The debate on whether tech companies should build “backdoors” into encrypted devices and platforms to help the government in such situations has been discussed time and again and the recent attacks have once again brought the debate to the forefront.

Reuters said that although early reports suggested that Paris attackers relied on encryption, no concrete evidence has been found to support the same. Security researchers, privacy advocates and tech companies opine that backdoors would expose data to malicious hackers.

“Encryption is a security tool we rely on everyday to stop criminals from draining our bank accounts, to shield our cars and airplanes from being taken over by malicious hacks, and to otherwise preserve our security and safety”, Garfield said.