This past june in a new england town a cyber tip came in to fbi agents and local Law Enforcement, and that tip suggested that a 9yearold little girl was being sexually abused. The abuser was using a particular app to send out images of what he was doing to that little girl while remaining anonymous. Our agent, along with our state and local partners contacted the app provider using Legal Process. We got information that allowed us to locate that little girl in 24 hours. We obtained multiple search warrants and rescued her and arrested her abuser. In another case, also over the summer, a different Child Predator used a different app to distribute sexually explicit images of two other young girls, one 12 and one 13 years old, responding for a tip, agents served Legal Process on that provider and located and rescued those two young girls in less than 12 hours. Both of those cases could have ended very differently. Because without the responses to lawful orders, we would not have known about those children, and we would not have been able to rescue them. I just gave you two heart wrenching examples, but Law Enforcement receives millions of tips like that every year. Success stories are great, but the landscape has been changing under our feet with the spread of user controlled default encryption providers cannot identify horrific images within encrypted data. That means the tips like the ones that allowed us to rescue those three little girls, those tips do not get sent. The harm does not stop, the victims those little kids are still out there and enduring the abuse. Only the tips, the information that could help us identify them disappear. Our ability to use the Legal Process to investigate and save the kids in those images is eroding too. All too often, vital electronic evidence is made unavailable through encryption that does not allow for execution of Legal Process, including Court Approved search warrants. That is why we are here today, to talk about the challenges of default encryption and lawful access, and what we can all do together to find a way forward. Today you will hear about other cases like those two i just mentioned. Some of the stories will come from the victims, survivors of abuse can tell us firsthand about the cost and consequences we all face if we lose the ability to keep people safe. Those stories are hard to listen to, and they should be hard to listen to because no one should have to live or endure what those victims or endure what those victims did. The images show horrific abuse of awful crimes against kids, even infants and toddlers. Photographs and videotape so it can follow them for years to come. If we do not talk about this, if we do not confront these reallife horrors happening to real people, if we do not take action and do something soon to address the lawful access problem, it will be too late, and we will lose the ability to find kids who need to be rescued. Will lose the ability to find the bad guys that need to be arrested and stop. We will lose the ability to keep the most Vulnerable People we serve safe from harm. We cannot let that happen. Technology has made life easier for the good guys, no doubt, but it has also made life much easier for a wide range of bad guys, including international and domestic terrorists, hackers, opioid traffickers, and Child Predators. Like other criminals, Child Predators routinely rely on encrypted phones and laptops to store explicit photographs, and in Exchange Contact information of victims, and coconspirators over encrypted platforms. These devices and platforms have become spaces where vital rules against soliciting child abuse, against trading in and feeding that abuse against threatening Abuse Victims struggling to make a normal life can no longer effectively be applied. It makes sense to gather here today because we are at a turning point. Some of our partners in the Tech Industry have been a huge help getting the evidence we need. Facebook and some other Tech Companies employ thousands of people to help identify child sexual abuse imagery, and notify the National Center for missing and exploited children, a vital partner who you will hear more from later. That alone is an uncomfortable fact. The sheer volume of this awful imagery really does keep thousands of people and more fully occupied to handle it. That is not even talking about the Law Enforcement response. Uncomfortable facts are still facts. Every year facebook provides more than 90 of the referrals received. They receive 18 million referrals a year. Any one of which might be a tip that leads us to the next predator. Facebook is saving lives with those tips. There are other Tech Companies that have chosen to blind themselves to the content on their platforms. Those companies provide few if any that lead to Law Enforcement, and we know their platforms post content involving abused children. The companies themselves cannot identify it anymore, so they do not warn us about the bulk of what has happened. Some of those companies have millions or billions of customers here and abroad, so there is a lot of abuse going undetected. Unfortunately, facebook could the headed in the same direction. Facebook announced a privacy first plan in march, and their intention is to make all communications on facebook and instagram and and encrypted end to end encrypted. If face the carries that out, they will have access to metadata, but not the content of any messages, including attached photos and videos. When it comes to people who create and distribute child pornography, it should not be hard to see why time stamps and address blocks are poor substitutes as leads, and certainly as evidence, for the images and videos they are disturbing. This is incredibly concerning to put it mildly. When it comes to protecting children, we are at a real inflection point, and we risk falling off the cliff. Most of the tips facebook currently provides are based on content, with end to end encryption, those would dry up. Facebook would no longer be able to see the content of its usersaccounts, and that will not stop the tips, it will prevent facebook from providing content to Law Enforcement in process of legal enforcement. The content we need to find who and where a victim is. The fact that there are 18 million tips a year shows we are not just talking about a handful of abusers, this is a huge problem, and fighting it with metadata will not cut it. To conduct a search and bring criminal charges, the government has to meet a high standard. To convict, an even higher one. Metadata will almost never meet either of those standards. An algorithm or ai might reveal suspicious customer usage, that kind of information standing alone will rarely be adequate to make a case and bring the perpetrators to justice. Even when it can, we will find ourselves laboring only on the tip of the iceberg, working off a small number of cases that authorities learn about, while the vast bulk of the kids who really need us remain out of view, hidden below. The real impact would be to those victims, to those kids. Facebook would transform from the main provider of child exploytation tips explication tips, to a dream come true for predators and child were not a first, a platform to find kids and criminals with little fear of consequences. A lawless space created not by the American People or their elected officials, but by the owners of one big company. This is not just about facebook my we have to make sure Tech Companies, all of them arent taking steps that will place content beyond the reach of courts. Or do blind themselves deliberately to what is happening on their platforms, where so much child explication takes place. We have to make sure companies cannot keep creating unfettered spaces yonder the protection of law, because there are kids out there we have not found, and dangerous criminals we have not caught, who were already moving on to their next victims. What will we do about it . I am well aware that encryption is a provocative subject for some, although i will tell you i get frustrated when people keep trying to suggest that we are trying to weaken encryption or cybersecurity more broadly, we are doing no such thing. And dispensing with strawmen would be a big step forward in this discussion. Cybersecurity is a central part of the fbis mission, but one part of the broader safety net to provide the American People not only safe data, safe personal information, but also safe communities and safe schools. We also have no interest in any backdoor, another strawman. The fbi, our state and local officers go through the front door with a warrant from a neutral judge only after we have met the requirements of the fourth amendment. We have to look at the concerns here more broadly, taking into account the american publics interest in the security and safety of our society and way of life. That is important because this is an issue that is getting worse all the time. As fbi director, i have visited all 56 field offices, and i meet frequently with Law Enforcement leaders from every state in the country and around the world, and i can tell you police chief after police chief, sheriff after sheriff, our closest foreign partners and other key professionals are raising this issue with growing concern and urgency. They keep telling us their work is too often blocked by encryption schemes that do not provide lawful access. While we are big believers in privacy and security, we also have a duty to protect the American People. That is the way it has always been, and no technological advance or Business Model changes that fundamental precept. Make no mistake, that is the path we are on now if we do not come together to solve this problem. To those out there who resist the need for lawful access, i would ask, ok, what is your solution . How do you propose to ensure the hardworking men and women of Law Enforcement sworn to protect you and your families actually maintain lawful access to the information they need to do their jobs . What are you going to say to the victims denied justice, who are left unrescued in the name of some incremental amount of Data Security . We started hearing increasingly there are solutions to be had that enable both strong cybersecurity and lawful access. I believe those solutions will be better if we move forward together. Today we will hear from experts on the dangers we face if lawful access slips away from us. We will hear from state, local, and federal investigators and prosecutors who see the impact of lawless spaces on the safety of our communities. I can tell you from firsthand experience what a World Without lawful access to content looks like. From those outside Law Enforcement who work to protect our children, and foreign partners struggling with the same issues we are, we have made a point of inviting the Tech Industry to attend today, and we continue to reach out to industry to find ways to protect our data and our families, our children. They are not on stage today, today is about showing the human cost of technology that undermines protections our kids deserve, but there will be many more discussions to come. Let me be clear, we are not here to demonize tech, and we could not do our day jobs without technological tools. We know of the concerns of Technological Companies and protecting their usersdata. With the context we provide today about how Data Security fits in with the other flesh and blood safety needs of our communities, will be better able to forge ahead. My view, this summit could not come at a better time. Lawful access is not just a future problem, it is here now. We in government, Law Enforcement, victims advocacy, and the Tech Industry have the power and ability and skills to find a mutually acceptable solution. We have put some of the brightest minds of the country on this issue and we have learned it can responsibly be done. We are not prescribing a particular technical solution. Every company is different, and the companies themselves are in the best position to develop lawful access solutions. We all want safe, secure, private data, but we also want safe and secure communities. We can have both. I really do believe that. I hope you have a great conference. I look forward to hearing ideas that come out of todays discussions. Thanks. applause