WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein — The US government needs to get access to encryption keys to prevent terrorists from avoiding detection or going dark, US Congressman Peter King told Sputnik on Wednesday.
"The private sector has to find a way to allow the government to break the encryption when there is a court order," King said of technologies that allow for secure communications.
Asked if government encryption keys were the next step legislators should take, King said "it is something that has to be done as quickly as possible."
Federal agencies, including the National Security Agency, have attempted to persuade private companies to guarantee the US government access to data in criminal or national security investigations amid an increasing use of encryption by users to protect their data.
On September 25, an Obama administration working group created four approaches to gain access to encrypted user data through the addition of a physical encrypted port, the splitting of encryption keys, software updates and a so-called forced backup, according to media reports.
However, many private technology companies, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, have strongly opposed government security backdoors, and said data cannot be retrieved from some applications they provide to users.
