Congress wades into encryption debate with bill to create expert panel

Growing concern about terrorists' use of encrypted communication is spurring Congress to act, but the first major piece of legislation is taking a cautious approach as lawmakers grapple with how to spy on suspected criminals without weakening cybersecurity and privacy.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Sen Mark Warner (D-VA), who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, are set to introduce a bill that would create a national commission on security and technology to come up with creative ways to solve the problem. The panel would be made up of civil liberty and privacy advocates, law enforcement and intelligence officials, professors, lawyers, tech executives, and computer science and cryptography experts. Despite calls from some lawmakers to do so, the bill would not mandate that tech companies build "backdoors" into encrypted cellphones or Internet sites to give law enforcement access to digital communication. The US tech industry strongly opposes such mandates.