Over 150 Tech companies urge President Obama to reject backdoor encryption

May 19, 2015: Today, over 150 technology companies including major players like Apple, Google and Microsoft, non-profit organisations and cyber security experts wrote a letter to President Obama urging not to support any legislation which allow the backdoor access into their products allowing intelligence agencies to access encrypted data.

In a letter, the tech companies, cryptologists and rights groups said that mandatory backdoors - which many government authorities in US and abroad have been calling for - would weaken the cybsecurity and it will "undermine human rights."

"More than undermining every American's cybersecurity and the nation'a economic security, introducing new vulnerabilities to weaken encrypted in the U.S. would also undermine human rights and information security around the globe. If American companies maintain the ability to unlock their customers' data and devices on request, governments other than the United States will demand the same access, and will also be emboldened to demand the same capability from their native companies. The U.S. government, having made the same demands, will have little room to object. The result will be an information environment riddled vulnerabilities that could be exploited by even the most repressive or dangerous regimes. That's not a future that the American people or the people of the world deserve."

The letter is wrote in wake of the growing voices in goverment asking for backdoors. Privacy activist and New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute policy director Kevin Bankston organized the letter to maintain the pressure on White House. He thinks President has been letting top intelligence and law enforcement officials to criticize companies for making their devices more secure, and allowing them to suggest that Congress should pass anti-encryption, pro-backdoor legislation.

It will be interesting to see who wins in this battle of privacy, the people's interest or state surveillance. We'll keep you posted, do comment about what you think on this matter.

Related Post: France passes controversial law which allows govt to seek data from Tech companies

Image by EVAN VUCCI /API

Share on Google Plus

About Lets Think

An Electronics Engineer by education, a part-time blogger by passion. He loves everything about technology, hence he writes about it. Interest includes Technology, Startups and Mobile Applications.