Citing encryption, FBI lobbying to keep phone metadata spying powers

The law that the Obama Administration cites to allow bulk telephone metadata collection expires on June 1, and the FBI has already begun lobbying to keep Section 215 of the Patriot Act from expiring. Bad guys "going dark" using encryption, the FBI says, is one of the reasons why the government needs to collect the metadata of every phone call made to and from the United States.

Robert Anderson, the FBI’s chief of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said that the Patriot Act is necessary because encrypted communications are becoming more commonplace in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures. "In the last two to three years, that whole ‘going dark’ thing went from a crawl to a flat-out sprint because the technology is changing so rapidly," Anderson said. Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, said that if Section 215 expires, "Obviously it’s going to impact what we do as an organization and certainly on cyber." The comments, especially as they relate to encryption, are part of a growing chorus of calls -- from as high as President Barack Obama -- that the government needs Silicon Valley's assistance for backdoors into encrypted tech products like the iPhone.