“It is unlikely that getting voluntary participation across these organizations (many start-ups) would have any success,” Hibbert said on Thursday. “Leaning toward a more aggressive stance of legally requiring access to the back end or baking in an encryption back door, makes sense.”
On Tuesday, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will address the issue of encrypted data and communications potentially used in terrorist plots at the beginning of 2016.
“If only US-based companies sign-on, or legislation only covers US based facilities, customers and users may simply move elsewhere,” Hibbert explained. “Some vendors and services including Microsoft Office 365 have had resistance from European companies who refuse to store their cloud data within the United States.”
The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, France and San Bernardino, California went undetected by US intelligence agencies, raising renewed attention to the possible problems posed by secure communications technologies in counterterrorism efforts.
