EFF Worries White House May Not Share Same Encryption Concerns

White House staffers seemed attentive during a Dec.10 meeting about concerns of more than a dozen nonprofit groups and technology companies about law enforcement access to encrypted devices, but Electronic Frontier Foundation Activism Director Rainey Reitman said the staffers didn't seem to share those views. "They maintained that President [Barack] Obama’s position has not changed in the last few months," she wrote in a Thursday blog post. "While they seemed well aware of our concerns about the technical infeasibility of inserting backdoors, they didn’t necessarily share them. That worried us a great deal." Rainey told us in an email that EFF wasn't represented in the meeting, which was attended by representatives from Access Now and New America's Open Technology Institute. The meeting happened after a We the People petition on strong encryption drew more than 100,000 signatures (see 1512090074). Concerns remain about increasing calls from law enforcement officials, including FBI Director James Comey (see 1512100032), for back-door access to end-to-end encrypted devices in terrorism and criminal investigations. The groups, which have said granting such access would undermine everyone's security and privacy, made several specific requests, Reitman wrote in the post, saying the White House is likely to issue a response by the end of the year. A National Security Council spokesman confirmed in an email that the meeting occurred but declined to comment on who attended or what was said beyond the White House's response to the petition.