Coalition Letter to President Obama 10/27/2016

Tags: 2010s Access Now Apple Backdoors EFF International

Published: October 2016

Abstract: On October 27, 2016, a coalition of domestic organizations and experts sent a letter to President Barack Obama in which they urged the White House to respond to a petition using the Administration’s “We the People” platform. The petition asked that the Administration “[p]ublicly affirm your support for strong encryption,” to “[r]eject any law, policy, or mandate that would undermine our security” online, and to “encourage other governments worldwide to do the same.” The letter states that the petition fulfilled the threshold requirements for an official response from the Administration, and that the Administration, which the website pledges will provide an official response within 60 days of meeting the threshold, has not provided a substantive response in the 365 days since that date. The letter then describes various actions taken by the FBI, U.S. Congress, state legislatures, China, the UK, Brazil, Russia, and India that “undermine the security of the global internet” and “endanger the technology sector globally”. The letter’s purpose is to urge President Obama to “repudiate any type of mandate requiring third-party access to encrypted data, both stored and in transit,” and to “clarify the United States’ position and establish its leadership on this critically important topic.”