Robert Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Wednesday lamented that companies have moved ahead with encryption designed to keep the U.S. government out of their customers’ data, saying the feds are open to working with businesses on security issues.
A “middle ground” should exist between full encryption and none at all, Litt said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and could provide privacy to U.S. citizens while giving the government access to data for lawful law enforcement purposes. His remarks came less than a year after Apple Inc. and Google Inc. made encryption standard on their mobile operating systems, following fears about U.S. government surveillance prompted by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks.
