Electronic snooping by NSA won't stop ISIS

[Commentary] It's increasingly clear since the Paris terrorist attacks that the future of Americans' privacy is largely in Silicon Valley's hands. Valley leaders such as Apple's Tim Cook, and Alphabet/Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai are going to need the technology community's full support to ward off political pressure from the FBI and NSA, who want government access to encrypted data on mobile devices. The United States needs to aggressively pursue terrorists. But it must not allow emotions of the moment to result in an ill-conceived security policy undermining not only Americans' privacy but also the success of the nation's driving industry.

Apple and Google are on the spot because they have crafted what is known as end-to-end encryption, which doesn't allow the government access to data even with a warrant. This might be worrisome if the NSA and FBI's snooping on electronic communications was effective in preventing terrorist attacks. It's not. The White House-appointed review group reached that conclusion in 2014 after studying 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since 9/11. An independent study by the New America Foundation confirmed the findings. The president, FBI and NSA have yet to offer an argument, let alone evidence, showing otherwise. Allowing the FBI and NSA access to texts, e-mails, photographs, calendars, address books, bank accounts, health records and individuals' whereabouts is an unacceptable and unprecedented violation of Americans' privacy. Why not just install surveillance equipment in every room of our homes and be done with it? But the most obvious flaw in government reasoning is the most depressing: If US technology isn't secure, terrorists -- like most customers worldwide -- will just buy somebody else's. American technology is the gold standard. Undercutting it in the name of terrorism is folly. The last thing we need in the face of this new, heightened danger is a weakening US economy.