FBI/DHS ignores UN international human rights treaty want to deny Americans the right to encrypt messages

FBI wants companies to stop citizens from encrypting emails even though the U.N. says encryption is necessary for human rights.

The FBI told congress that tech companies should “prevent encryption above all else”.

The FBI's assistant director Michael Steinbach, speaking at a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, explained how the the FBI uses technology to track and intercept supporters of Isis in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“There are 200-plus social media companies. Some of these companies build their business model around end-to-end encryption,” Steinbach said.

“When a company, a communications company or a ISP or social media company elects to build in its software encryption, end-to-end encryption, and leaves no ability for even the company to access that, we don’t have the means by which to see the content”, he added.

“When we intercept it, we intercept encrypted communications. So that’s the challenge: working with those companies to build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else.

“We are striving to ensure appropriate, lawful collection remains available.”

Steinbach insisted that he wasn’t asking for a “back door” to be built into encryption products, telling legislators that “we’re not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious.”

First they've lied to congress about spying on Americans emails, phone calls and tracking every electronic trail we leave behind. Now they want us to believe they won't do anything "NEFARIOUS" with back door encryptions? Who but the 'sheeple' believe this crap?

What the FBI/DHS really wants is to make sure they're the only ones who can encrypt communications!

A recent U.N. report describes the importance of encryption and anonymity in facilitating essential human rights including the right to free expression and privacy.

"Online censorship, mass and targeted surveillance and data collection, digital attacks on civil society and repression resulting from online expression force individuals around the world to seek security to hold opinions without interference and seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds. Many seek to protect their security through encryption, the scrambling of data so only intended recipients may access it, which may be applied to data in transit (e.g., e-mail, messaging, Internet telephony) and at rest (e.g., hard drives, cloud services). Others seek additional protection in anonymity, using sophisticated technologies to disguise their identity and digital footprint."

"Encryption and anonymity, today’s leading vehicles for online security, provide individuals with a means to protect their privacy, empowering them to browse, read, develop and share opinions and information without interference and enabling journalists, civil society organizations, members of ethnic or religious groups, those persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, activists, scholars, artists and others to exercise the rights to freedom of opinion and expression."

"Yet, just as the telephone may be used both to report a crime to the police and to conspire to commit one, so too may the Internet be abused to interfere with the rights of others, national security or public order."

"Law enforcement and intelligence services often assert that anonymous or encrypted communications make it difficult to investigate financial crimes, illicit drugs, child pornography and terrorism. Individuals express legitimate concerns about how bullies and criminals use new technologies to facilitate harassment. Some States restrict or prohibit encryption and anonymity on these and other grounds, while others are proposing or implementing means for law enforcement to circumvent these protections and access individual communications."

Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) specifically protects the individual against “arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence” and “unlawful attacks on his or her honor and reputation”, and provides that “everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks”.

What this all boils down to is the FBI/DHS want to violate the UN human rights treaty our government agreed to in 1966 and ratified in 1992.

The U.S. ratified the ICCPR in 1992. Upon ratification, the ICCPR became the "supreme law of the land" under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives acceded treaties the status of federal law. The U.S. must comply with and implement the provisions of the treaty just as it would any other domestic law, subject to Reservations, Understandings and Declarations (RUDs) entered when it ratified the treaty.

"The ICCPR thus applies to government actions in all states and counties, and also applies to private contractors who carry out government functions."