[applause] good afternoon, everybody. Or good morning. Thank you for that introduction, sue, and thank you and your team for putting on this wonderful program. Its great to see so many members of Law Enforcement who are here today. Many of you have come a long way, and we appreciate your presence. You are joined by those from the community, industry, and capitol hill. Perhaps this is the first time that so many stake holders in the lawful access conversation has been in one place. Im especially thankful to be joined by two good friends from abroad, our staunchest allies, peter dutton the australian minister for home affairs and the home secretary of the united kingdom. I thank each of you for coming, accepting my invitation to be here. Our nations face a constellation of Common Security concerns, but we dont face them alone. We have always stood shoulder to shoulder, in the fight for freedom, peace, and security, and we will continue to do so. Just last night, we on behalf of our governments signed the first ever agreement under the cloud act which became law last year thanks to industry support, bipartisan congressional action and the president s leadership. That act facilitates criminal investigations by allowing Law Enforcement from each country to obtain evidence directly from each others commercial providers, pursuant to Legal Process that safeguards privacy rights. The theme of todays summit is distinct from the cloud act. But the act is worth mentioning at the outset because it serves as an excellent example of how much we can achieve when all stake holders come together in pursuit of a common goal. To address the lawful access issue, it will take that kind of commitment, along with an honest public discussion. As individuals, and as a nation, we have become dependent on a vast digital infrastructure. That in turn has made us vulnerable to cyber criminals and foreign adversaries that target that infrastructure. Encryption provides enormous benefits to society, by enabling secure communications, data storage, and online transactions. As the federal government, we welcome these improvements to privacy and security and will work to preserve and strengthen them. But the Digital World that has proven such a boon in many ways has also empowered criminals. Like everybody else, criminals of all stripes increasingly rely on wireless communications, handheld devices and the internet. In todays world, evidence of crime is increasingly digital evidence. As we work to secure our data and our communications from hackers, we must recognize that our citizens face a far broader array of threats. Hackers are a danger, but so are violent criminals, terrorists, drug traffickers, human traffickers, fraudsters and sexual predators. While we should not hesitate to deploy encryption to protect ourselves from cyber criminals, this should not be done in a way that eviscerates societys ability to defend itself against other types of criminal threats. In other words, making our Virtual World more secure should not come at the expense of making us more vulnerable in the real world. All our personal rights, all the rights we cherish, whether to life, to liberty, to property, speech or privacy, ultimately depends upon our ability to maintain a safe society. Whether you agree with john lock about everything, he was certainly right about that. The founding document of our republic, the constitution states at the outset, that one of the principal reasons we have framed our body politic is to provide just this security or as it states to provide for the common defense, that is, security from foreign enemies and to ensure domestic tranquility, that is, protection from predators within society. Unless society as a whole has the ability to preserve this peace and security, our rights ultimately become meaningless. The essence of all political thinking is about how to reconcile the claims of the individual, with the interest of the broader community. In all the great countries represented here right now on this stage, we have erected strong protections around our individual rights. There are none stronger in the world. But while at the same time, we have placed some constraints on them were necessary to protect the safety of society as a whole. Apart from life itself, liberty is our greatest value. And yet limits are placed even on this [inaudible] when necessary to protect the safety of society. We deprive people of their liberty. We arrest them. We take them into custody, when we have probable cause to believe that they have committed or are engaged in a crime. If we could wave a magic wand right now and conjure up some technology that would enhance all of our liberty, individually, by absolutely insulating every individual from being physically hindered, preventing any possibility of arrest, would we want to deploy this technology . It might protect the innocent from being mugged, but it would also insulate all criminals from being arrested. What is happening here is that some Companies Want to say to the individual, hey, we can make you invisible to Law Enforcement. But do we want to live in a society where everyone is invisible to Law Enforcement . These considerations apply to privacy. That right has never been absolute. The 4th amendment strikes a balance between the individual citizens interest in conducting certain of their affairs in private and the general publics interest in subjecting possible criminal activity to investigation. It does so on the one hand by securing for each individual a private enclave around his person house papers and effects, a zone of the individuals reasonable expectations of privacy. As long as an individual acts within that zone of privacy, his activities are shielded from unreasonable government investigation. On the other hand, the 4th amendment establishes that under certain circumstances, the public has a legitimate need to gain access to an individuals zone of privacy in pursuit of Public Safety, and it defines the terms under which the government obtains that access. When the government has probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is within the individuals zone of privacy, the government is entitled to search for and seize that evidence, and the search usually must be preceded by a judicial determination that probable cause exists and be authorized by a warrant. Now, as you heard this morning, some Companies Want to deploy end to end encryption, on consumer products, that would be that would completely prevent Law Enforcement from gaining access to data or communication, even when there is probable cause. Essentially, this would establish privacy as an absolute right without regard to the safety or the impact on society as a whole. It is hard to overstate how perilous this is. By enabling dangerous criminals to cloak their communications and activities behind and essentially behind an essentially impenetrable digital shield the deployment of this encryption is already imposing huge costs on society. It is not just the reprehensible behavior on children but additional forms of serious crimes enabled by end to end encryption. This technology is quickly extinguishing our ability to detect and prevent a wide range of criminal activity, from terrorism to large scale Drug Trafficking to financial fraud to Human Trafficking to transnational gang activity. And the clock is ticking. One point about the cost imposed by society by warrant proof encryption, it is not just about the crimes that could have been avoided or the criminals that escaped punishment. Converting the internet and communication platforms into a free zone, a lawfree zone, and thus giving criminals the means to operate free, of any lawful scrutiny will inevitably propel an expansion of criminal activity. If you remove any possible that the cops are going to be watching a neighborhood, the criminals already in that neighborhood will commit a lot more crime. Let me address some of the things that are floating around in this discussion. First, its claimed that law form is asking to impinge on privacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not seeking to move the goal posts at all. We are seeking to preserve the degree of privacy to which we have always been entitled under our constitution. It is not a degree of privacy that is absolute and impervious under all circumstances, it is a right to privacy that allows for lawful access when society can demonstrate a sufficientlycompelling need. In this regard, i was amused to see the impassioned statement of a leading Digital Rights activist two days ago. It said a secure messenger platform should provide the same amount of privacy as you have in your living room. Thats right. We agree. [laughter] thats exactly what Law Enforcement is seeking. And as you should all know, with a warrant, Law Enforcement can get access to your living room, both physically and virtually where there is probable cause to do so. Its also said that the government is seeking some secret back door to all data and communications. That sounds very nefarious, but it is false. We are seeking a front door. We would be happy if the Companies Providing the encryption keep the keys. What we are asking is that some responsible party have the keys so that when we can demonstrate a lawful basis, probable cause that crimes are being committed, we can gain access to that evidence. It also seems to me that the argument of companies that want to deploy warrant proof encryption rests on an unsustainable premise. The companies seem to think that the debate is over once they show that their technology will achieve some incremental increase in privacy, regardless of tim pact on the welfare regardless of the impact on the welfare of society. But our history shows that the extent of the rights has always depended on a balance between the claims of the individual and those of society. Think of it this way, in the hierarchy of rights and values, the right to life is at the top. There are many technologies available that could provide more security for my personal right to life. I would be much safer cruising down the highway in an m 1 tank, but the risks that would be invariably posed to all other drivers would be too great. Optimizing the value of one value only is not the end of the inquiry. The achieving of that isolated goal at all costs are just unacceptably high. The heart of the matter is, do the security advantages of warrant proof encryption offered to the individual outweigh the risks posed to the public by the same technology . This is not a decision for the companies to make themselves. It is a decision for society to make. The public can enjoy the benefits of encryption while still allowing for lawful access. Theres no doubt that we all benefit from encryption. It allows for ecommerce and many other online applications, but those arent the applications that were talking about. Were not talking about consumer interactions with Online Enterprises such as banks or retailers. Law enforcement can go to those institutions with a warrant and obtain the information that we seek. And were not talking about encryption for Enterprises Like Power Companies or banks that they use to protect their operations. What were concerned about is consumer to Consumer Communications and Consumer Devices and data storage. The argument is made that to achieve perfect protection against bad actors, it is essential to override societys interest in retaining access to evidence. Some hold this view dogmatically claiming that it is technologically impossible to provide lawful access without weakening security against unlawful access. But in the world of cybersecurity, we do not deal with absolute guarantee, but in relative risks. All systems fall short of optimality and have some residual risk of vulnerability, a point which the Tech Community acknowledges when they propose that Law Enforcement can satisfy our requirements by exploiting vulnerabilities in their products. The real question is whether the residual risk of vulnerable, resulting from incorporating a lawful access mechanism is materially greater than those already in the unmodified product, and the department does not believe that that can be demonstrated. We are confident that there are Technical Solutions that will allow lawful access without materially weakening the security provided to consumers by encryption. Such encryption regimes already exist. To that point, the Tech Community regularly implements new features that slightly affect the potency of encryption and other security protocols, and they do so because its profitable and because those features benefit consumers. For example, providers design their products to allow access for Software Updates using centrallymanaged security keys. Even if allowing for lawful access resulted in theory, in a slight risk differential, its significant should not be judged solely by the fact that it falls short of the theoretical optimality or perfect protection, the plutonic ideal. The significance of any incremental list should be assessed by its practical effect on Consumer Cybersecurity as well as its relation to the net risks that offering the product poses for society. And that analysis must also take into account alternative and less socially injurious ways of mitigating the risk. If one already has an effective level of security, say by way of illustration one that protects against 99 of foreseeable threats, is it reasonable to incur massive further costs to move slightly closer to optimality and attain say a 99. 5 pbt level of protection 99. 5 level of protection even where the risks addressed is extremely remote . A companys shareholders would not allow the company to incur the costs of imposing that change. And society should not allow companies to inflict those costs on society itself. At the end of the day, we must make these choices based on the net benefit to society. If the choice is between a world where we can achieve 99 assurance against Cyber Threats for the typical consumer, while still providing Law Enforcement 80 of the access it needs to protect society, or a world where we have boosted our cybersecurity to 99. 5 but at a cost of reducing law forms access to Law Enforcements access to zero, the choice for society should be clear. I want to make a point about freedom and our privacy. The ability of Law Enforcement to detect and interdict criminal actors, not allowing them does not advance either privacy or freedom. There are two ways to protecting society, either detect or neutralize the bad guys or regiment society as a whole. Anyone who has gone through a security line in an airport, moving your shoes, your belts, having your clothes thrown out on the table, your toiletries, for all to see, knows firsthand that regimentation places a burden on our privacy rights. I call it the curfew concept. When i was first attorney general, 28 years ago, there was a lot of violence in our urban areas. Much of it induced by gang activity. And there were two different approaches used. Some cities empowered their police to identify and neutralize the gangs and get them off the streets. Others aadopted the regimentation approach, the curfew. Everybody was kept off the streets, not the bad guys, everybody, and those are the two approaches to protecting society. More so than ever, the principle tool that we have in Law Enforcement to identify and neutralize the criminals is to listen to and read their communications. There is no substitute, and if we lose the ability to conduct electronic surveillance or to access digital records, we lynn we will inevitably be driven to regiment of society in order to secure ourselves. In turn we will lose our liberty as well as our privacy, thats an extremely high price to pay if we prioritize impenetrable encryption above all else. I do wish to credit give credit where credit is due. Some Tech Companies have taken significant steps to help detect and report criminality. When it comes to preventing crime, we hope that industry will continue to be an ally, not an adversary. We hope that the power of technology will provide greater safety to the public, not place us at greater risk of harm and exploitation. We think our tech sector has the ingenuity to develop effective ways to provide secure encryption while also providing secure legal access. And its well past time for some in the Tech Community to abandon the indefensible posture that a technical solution is not worth exploring and instead turn their considerable talent and ingenuity to developing products that will reconcile good cybersecurity to the imperative of Public Safety and national security. As microsoft bill gates has observed, there is no question of ability. Its a question of willingness. Obviously the department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions. The time to achieve that may be limited. As this debate has dragged on and deployment of warrant proof encryption has accelerated, our ability to protect the public from criminal threats is rapidly deteriorating. The status quo is exception fally dangerous exceptionally dangerous, unacceptable and only getting worse. It is time for us to stop debating whether to address it and Start Talking about how to address it. Thank you very much. [applause] cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up saturday morning, wall street journal economics reporter sarah cheney will join us to discuss the september jobs report and the slowdown in manufacturing. And then university of virginias crystal ball managing editor talks about how House Democrats impeachment push is impacting campaign 2020. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern sat morning. Join the discussion saturday morning. Join the discussion. Watch washington journal monday starting at 7 00 eastern as the cspan bus continues our campaign 2020 battleground states tour across the country. On monday morning we will visit the battleground state of ohio. Next, we will hear from Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on the state of the u. S. Economy
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