FBI director calls for greater police access to communications

Apple and Google should reconsider their plans to enable encryption by default on their smartphones, and the U.S. Congress should pass a law requiring that all communication tools allow police access to user data, U.S. FBI Director James Comey said.

Comey, repeating his recent concerns about announcements from Apple and Google to offer new encryption tools on their smartphone OSes, went a step further Thursday, when he called on Congress to rewrite the 20-year-old Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

Following the past 15 months of leaks about surveillance at the U.S. National Security Agency, the pendulum of public opinion has swung too far away from law enforcement’s needs, Comey said in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

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