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In a speech today, AG Bill Barr re-upped DOJ's "Going Dark" push to require manufacturers of encrypted devices like iPhones to build in a way for law enforcement to gain access, which detractors call "back doors." /1 
Law enforcement officials have been pushing for forms of this since 2010. Their original focus was intercepting encrypted of data in transit, but they've shifted to the easier (but still far from easy) question of unlocking devices (data at rest). /2 nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/…
It keeps flaring and then receding. The FBI thought it had almost convinced the White House to back a legislative proposal in 2013, but then Snowden happened and it died amid the surveillance uproar. /3 nytimes.com/2013/05/08/us/…
A few years later, Comey made a new push focused on devices, using the iphone of the San Bernardino terrorist attacker as a rallying cry, but it receded again amid the upheaval of Trump winning the election, Comey firing, etc. /4 nytimes.com/2016/02/27/tec…
Last year, Comey's successor, Chris Wray, and the DAG, Rod Rosenstein tried to revive it. nytimes.com/2018/03/24/us/… But then it turned out that their speeches used a talking point that falsely exaggerated the scale of the problem, and DOJ got quiet again./5 nytimes.com/2018/05/23/us/…
So now, 14 months later, Barr is raising the subject yet again, arguing that the risk of increased vulnerabilities created by such mechanisms is outweighed by the risk of investigators not being able to carry out warrants. /6
The privacy/cybersecurity community continues to disagree. Here's a new blog series by the @ACLU 's @joncallas criticizing the government's latest ideas, for example./end aclu.org/issues/privacy…
