The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has announced it will sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for reportedly breaking the encryption on the smartphones of US citizens.
The US government had previously urged tech companies to build backdoors in their products aimed at circumventing encryption, but escalated its efforts by building its capacity to decrypt user devices, the statement added.
ACLU representatives added that an FBI division called the Electronic Device Analysis Unit (EDAU) was attempting to procure software aimed at decrypting information securely stored on mobile handsets.
"The FBI is secretly breaking the encryption that secures our cell phones and laptops from identity thieves, hackers, and abusive governments, and it refuses to even acknowledge that it has information about these efforts — even though some details have been filed publicly in federal court. We’re suing to get some answers," the statement read.
The ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain FBI records on the EDAU programme, but the bureau refused to confirm or deny information on the secretive unit via a Glomar response, despite records being publicly available.
Numerous governments, including the US, Australia and others have used similar programmes to decrypt information, CyberScoop reported last week. Europol has also launched a decryption platform to tackle organised crime.
US Government Accuses Chinese Companies of Backdoors
The news comes amid allegations from the Trump administration, which has routinely accused Chinese firms such as Huawei Technologies, ZTE and later, TikTok owner ByteDance, of spying and gathering data for the Chinese government.
The UK also blocked Huawei from building national networks in July and followed with a Telecommunications Bill in November imposing heavy fines on national telcos, up to 10 percent of annual turnover, due to the alleged security risks.