Hillary Clinton is far from the only politician taking advantage of the recent attacks in Paris to call for weaker encryption, but she’s one of the biggest. While she stopped short of calling for government-accessible backdoors in encryptions, she did call on Silicon Valley to start doing its part to combat terrorism and become more cooperative with governments. To be fair, her arguments were more reasonable than most, and all she wants is for the private and public sectors to work together to find a comfortable balance between safety and security.
Hillary Clinton has joined a growing number of politicians using the Paris attacks earlier this month to argue for a weaker encryption. Speaking at Council on Foreign Relations in Washington Thursday, the presidential candidate talked extensively about Islamic State, the recent attacks in Paris and what the US government could do in response. Part of that response was in tackling the technological means by which the Islamic State communicates, she said. “[One] challenge is how to strike the right balance of protecting privacy and security. Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem. “We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack. On the other hand, we know there are legitimate concerns about government intrusion, network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can and would exploit.”