Memo Details US’s Broader Strategy to Crack Phones

Apparently, in November 2015 senior national security officials ordered agencies across the US government to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple’s iPhone. The approach was formalized in a confidential National Security Council “decision memo,” tasking government agencies with developing encryption workarounds, estimating additional budgets and identifying laws that may need to be changed to counter what FBI Director James Comey calls the “going dark” problem: investigators being unable to access the contents of encrypted data stored on mobile devices or traveling across the Internet. Details of the memo reveal that, in private, the government was honing a sharper edge to its relationship with Silicon Valley alongside more public signs of rapprochement.