Vopak goes digital, but staff are unhappy about their movements being monitored

DutchNews, November 20, 2019

The Vopak terminal in Eemshaven. Wutsje via Wikimedia Commons

Workers at chemical storage company Vopak are concerned about a new electronic pass card that all workers will have to carry from next year, which will monitor everything they do, the Financieele Dagblad said on Wednesday. 


The card will record where people are, if they are standing up or sitting down and even if they have a work permit, the paper said.

‘We have our real doubts about this,’ Cees den Breejen, of the company works council, told the paper. ‘We have no problem if this is about safety but this is very privacy-sensitive. Where someone walks, if he has gone to the loo… what is the company going to do with all this data?’ 

Vopak argues that the new system will boost safety and will, for example, send out a signal if the wearer is lying on the ground. ‘If someone is horizontal for some time, then the other badges in the neighbourhood will get a signal,’ CIO Leo Brand said. 

The pass cards will first be tested in January and will also get an update allowing sound to be recorded, the FD said. Visitors to Vopak storage facilities will also be given such a card to wear. 

The personnel monitoring is part of the company’s plans to implement the use of digital technology across all aspects of its operations, including the placement of robots in tanks to monitor for leaks and sensors to check if pumps and taps are working properly. 

‘I think it will be very hard to prove that this monitoring falls within the bounds of privacy legislation,’ lawyer Thomas van Essen told the paper. ‘I’ve not come across a system which goes this far.’

China's blacklisted AI firms: what you should know

Yahoo  - AFP, Eva Xiao and Danni Zhu, October 13, 2019

China's AI technology companies are rising stars -- here people have their faces
scanned at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai (AFP Photo/
HECTOR RETAMAL)

Beijing (AFP) - The Chinese high-tech companies blacklisted by Washington over alleged ties to rights abuses are rising stars in China's ambitious drive to overtake the United States in the technology sector.

They make surveillance cameras, facial recognition software and other technology that has become ubiquitous in Xinjiang, the heavily policed northwestern region where an estimated one million mostly Muslim minorities, like ethnic Uighurs, are held in internment camps.

The eight firms were added on Monday to a list of 28 entities that US companies are barred from selling components to without government approval.

Here is a look at the companies targeted:

Hikvision

One of the world's largest suppliers of surveillance equipment, Hikvision is the poster child of Chinese tech firms benefiting from Xinjiang's booming security apparatus.

In 2017, it won at least five security-related contracts totalling 1.85 billion yuan ($260 million) in Xinjiang -- including a "social prevention and control system" featuring tens of thousands of cameras.

But the company also has a global presence, with nearly 30 percent of its revenue last year coming from outside China.

Hikvision has said the US listing lacks "factual basis", and downplayed its impact in a conference call aimed at investors and media on Wednesday.

"Currently, the majority of US components can all be directly replaced or replaced with new designs," said board secretary Huang Fanghong.

"If it's necessary, we will design our own chips."

Hikvision is one of the world's largest suppliers of surveillance equipment

(AFP Photo/FRED DUFOUR)

Megvii

An AI company backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba, Megvii's facial recognition technology is used across a broad range of applications in China, from "smile to pay" mobile payments to identifying individuals for law enforcement.

The firm plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong but one of its joint sponsors, Goldman Sachs, said it was "evaluating" its role in the wake of the blacklisting.

Megvii said the US move "reflects a misunderstanding of our company".

Only one percent of its 2018 revenue was from projects in Xinjiang, and no revenue was generated from the region in the first six months of 2019, it added.

In April, the New York Times reported that several Chinese AI firms, including Megvii, Yitu, and SenseTime, were behind software used to racially profile and track Uighurs.

According to media reports, former US vice president and presidential candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter, who has been accused by President Donald Trump of corruption, is a director at BHR Partners, a fund that invested in Megvii.

SenseTime

SenseTime is backed by an illustrious list of investors, including SoftBank, Alibaba, and US chipmaker Qualcomm.

Founded by MIT alumnus Tang Xiao'ou –- a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong -- the AI company develops facial and image recognition applications, such as crowd monitoring and identity verification for lending apps.

The firm has a research lab in Silicon Valley and is partnering with universities around the world, including MIT, on AI research.

In an emailed statement, MIT said it would "review all existing relationships" with organisations added to Washington's entity list, and "modify any interactions, as necessary".

According to Dahua's 2018 financial report, about 36 percent of the 

Shenzhen-listed company's revenue came from abroad (AFP Photo/STR)

SenseTime said it was "deeply disappointed" by the blacklisting and would "work closely with all relevant authorities to fully understand and resolve the situation".

Dahua

Dahua Technology is another leading video surveillance equipment provider with an increasing footprint overseas and has projects in Brazil, Italy, and other countries.

According to its 2018 financial report, about 36 percent of the Shenzhen-listed company's revenue came from abroad.

In August, the US also formally banned Dahua and Hikvision, along with telecom giant Huawei and other firms, from obtaining government contracts.

Meiya Pico

Meiya Pico, a digital forensics company, drew scrutiny from rights groups after security researchers said the firm was behind "MFSocket" -- an app that enables police to extract contacts, messages, and other personal data from smartphones.

Yitu

Yitu Technology has developed apps for facial and speech recognition, such as identity authentication at banks, cancer screening, and monitoring transport hubs to assist law enforcement.

iFlytek

Shenzhen-listed AI firm iFlytek is one of the top speech recognition companies in China.

In 2017, Human Rights Watch said iFlytek was working with China's public security ministry to collect "voice pattern" samples and develop a surveillance system that could identify targeted voices in phone conversations.

Yixin

Yixin Science and Technology Co. Ltd is a Beijing-based security firm that sells video surveillance, facial recognition, and counter-terrorism products.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the company provided wireless surveillance systems at bus stops to monitor for terrorist attacks.

WikiLeaks releases CIA hacks of Apple Mac computers

Yahoo – AFP, March 23, 2017

According to Wikileaks documents the CIA can inject a undetectable bug deep
 into the essential firmware of an Apple Mac computer that will not be erased
even when the computer is reformatted (AFP Photo/JUSTIN SULLIVAN)

Washington (AFP) - The Central Intelligence Agency is able to permanently infect an Apple Mac computer so that even reinstalling the operating system will not erase the bug, according to documents published Thursday by WikiLeaks.

In its second release allegedly from the CIA's arsenal of hacking tools, WikiLeaks also said that it appears the US spy agency has been able since 2008 to insert it bugs onto new and unused iPhones by intervening in Apple's supply and distribution network.

The release follows the initial publication on March 9 by the anti-secrecy group of thousands of pages of instructions and code from what it called the entire CIA arsenal of hacking tools.

The documents are generally believed to be genuine although the CIA has not acknowledged this.

The publication of the documents sparked a US counterintelligence investigation into how the documents leaked out from the CIA and made their way to WikiLeaks, with some people pointing fingers at the agency's use of private subcontractors as a likely source.

The newest documents focus on how the CIA targets Apple's popular personal electronics to spy on users.

They show the CIA developed a tool in 2012 called "Sonic Screwdriver" that can hijack an Apple computer's password-protected boot process from peripheral devices like adapters and USB drives.

By doing so, they can inject a undetectable bug deep into the computer's essential firmware that will not be erased even when the computer is reformatted.

The manual for the "NightSkies" bug shows that the CIA developed it in 2008 to be implanted physically in brand new iPhones.

"While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target, it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization's supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments," WikiLeaks said.

The documents provide a glimpse into the workings of the CIA. One showed the agency urgently trying to adapt NightSkies to a certain Apple laptop.

The agency "has the opportunity to gift a MacBook Air to a target that will be implanted with this tool," one 2009 document said.

"The tool will be a beacon/implant that runs in the background of a MacBook Air that provides us with command and control capabilities."

Related Article:

CIA blasts WikiLeaks for publishing secret documents

CIA blasts WikiLeaks for publishing secret documents

Yahoo – AFP, Paul Handley, Rob Lever, March 9, 2017

Assange said WikiLeaks had "a lot more information" about the CIA's hacking
operation but would hold off on publishing it until it had spoken to tech
manufacturers (AFP Photo/Saul LOEB)

Washington (AFP) - The Central Intelligence Agency accused WikiLeaks of endangering Americans, helping US rivals and hampering the fight against terror threats by releasing what the anti-secrecy site claimed was a trove of CIA hacking tools.

A CIA spokeswoman would not confirm the authenticity of the materials published by WikiLeaks, which said they were leaked from the spy agency's hacking operations.

Nevertheless, said spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak, "The American public should be deeply troubled by any WikiLeaks disclosure designed to damage the intelligence community's ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries."

"Such disclosures not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm," she said.

Horniak defended the CIA's cyber operations, which the WikiLeaks materials showed focused heavily on breaking into personal electronics using a wide range of malware systems.

"It is CIA's job to be innovative, cutting-edge, and the first line of defense in protecting this country from enemies abroad," she said.

Massive leak

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks published nearly 9,000 documents it said were part of a huge trove leaked from the CIA, describing it as the largest-ever publication of secret intelligence materials.

"This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA," it said.

Graphic outlining technical objectives of CIA hacking schemes, according 

to a new document release by WikiLeaks (AFP Photo/John SAEKI)

The documents showed that CIA hackers can turn a TV into a listening device, bypass popular encryption apps, and possibly control one's car.

Most experts believe the materials to be genuine, and US media said Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is opening a criminal probe into the leak.

The source of the materials remained unclear. The investigation could focus on whether the CIA was sloppy in its controls, or, as The Washington Post reported, it could be "a major mole hunt" for a malicious leaker or turncoat inside the agency.

WikiLeaks itself said the documents, hacking tools and code came from an archive that had circulated among US government hackers and private contractors.

An investigation would come as the CIA is already enmeshed in a politically-charged probe into Russia's alleged interference in the US election last year in support of President Donald Trump's campaign.

WikiLeaks, which has stunned the US government with a series of publications of top secret political, diplomatic and intelligence materials, said the publication Tuesday was only the first of a series of releases of CIA hacking materials.

That raised concerns that the site could release the actual hacking tools it obtained along with the documents. Experts worry those could fall into the hands of anyone, including US enemies and criminals.

Tech sector scrambles for fixes

The WikiLeaks documents detailed the CIA's practice of exploiting vulnerabilities in hardware and software, without ever informing producers of them.

The CIA allegedly found ways to hack into personal electronics from leading companies like Apple and Samsung, Android phones, popular Microsoft software, and crucial routers from major manufacturers.

The documents suggest it can also infiltrate smartphones in a way that allows it to get around popular messaging encryption apps.

The tech sector was scrambling to understand how their products were at risk.

"While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today

 were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address 

any identified vulnerabilities," Apple said in an emailed statement on the 

WikiLeaks documents (AFP Photo/Jack Taylor)

"While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities," Apple said in an emailed statement.

"We're confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities," Google director of information security and privacy Heather Adkins said in a released statement.

"Our analysis is ongoing and we will implement any further necessary protections."

Samsung and Microsoft both said they were "looking into" what WikiLeaks revealed.

Encryption apps safe

Joseph Hall, a technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights organization, said the documents raise questions about the US government's pledge last year to disclose vulnerabilities to technology firms.

That pledge means "security flaws should get back to the companies so they can get fixed, and not languish for years," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union commented in a tweet: "When the govt finds software security holes, it should help fix them, not hoard them and leave everyone vulnerable."

Companies that make encryption programs and apps targeted by the CIA said the revelations show the agency has not been able to break their software.

Open Whisper Systems, which developed the technology for the Signal encryption app, said the CIA documents showed that Signal works.

"None of the exploits are in Signal or break Signal Protocol encryption," the group said in a tweet.

"The existence of these hacking tools is a testimonial to the strength of the encryption," said Steve Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science researcher, in a blog post.

Related Article:

WikiLeaks announces tech firm cooperation - New

Dutch draw up new law to block ‘damaging’ telecom sector takeovers

DutchNews, February 16, 2017

Server farms will also fall under the new rules. Photo: Depositphotos.com 

Takeovers in the telecoms sector which could damage the national interest will be stopped in the Netherlands, if new legislation drawn up by economic affairs minister Henk Kamp becomes law. 

The draft bill will enable ministers to prevent takeovers of ‘telephony, data centres, hosting services and internet’ companies which are ‘of vital importance to national security and public order,’ according to an economic affairs ministry statement. 

The legislation will give ministers the option of banning or reversing takeovers within the telecoms sector with the aim of securing continuity, the reliability of services and the public interest, the ministry said. 

Commentators said the new law was inspired by the attempt by Mexican telecoms company America Movil to take over KPN in 2013. Kamp said at the time he was powerless to stop the takeover, which eventually failed. 

Dutch ministers also intervened last year when Belgian state postal company Bpost tried to take over PostNL. That takeover bid also flopped. 

Criminal activities

‘Our country will not benefit from takeovers by foreign firms which are linked to criminal activities, are financially vulnerable or do not have a transparent ownership structure,’ Kamp said in the statement. 

The draft legislation has now been put out to consultation and Kamp hopes to submit it to parliament before the summer. 

The ministry is also looking at ways of ensuring the continuity of other services, such as postal delivery.

Dutch police start using facial recognition techniques, database has 800,000 photos

DutchNews, December 16, 2016

Dutch police have started using facial recognition technology to identify suspects, broadcaster NOS said on Friday. 

The technology will be used to identify people whose photograph is included in the police database of 800,000 faces, the broadcaster said. 

The database is made up of photographs of people who have been jailed for at least a year or who are suspected of committing a crime carrying a sentence of at least a year. 

The photos of people who are innocent are supposed to be removed from the system but it is unclear how quickly that happens, NOS said. 

The system will be used to compare photographs of suspects taken by security cameras and bodycams with the database. 

Refugees

A second database, containing the photographs of refugees, people scheduled for deportation and people who have requested visas can only be accessed with the permission of the public prosecution department, NOS said.

‘This means it includes photographs of innocent people,’ said Daphne van der Kroft of internet privacy group Bits of Freedom. 

Information law professor Nico van Eijk told the broadcaster he is concerned about ‘feature creep’ – measures introduced for one purpose which are then used for another.

For example, cameras to recognise car number plates were introduced in an effort to spot suspects. But now talks are underway to keep the number plate information for four weeks, he said. 

How did Dutch phone calls end up in the hands of an Australian software firm?

DutchNews, September 30, 2016

Private telephone conversations between thousands of Dutch nationals have ended up in the hands of an Australian software company, the Volkskrant said on Friday. 

The conversations were recorded in 2010 and 2011 and the only explanation, telecom experts told the paper, is that they were recorded by British spy service GCHQ. The information was then probably handed over to the Australian company Appen with the aim of improving software for converting speech into text, the paper said. 

The Volkskrant was contacted by a Dutch national who worked for Appen in Britain in 2011. As part of her job, she was required to describe thousands of audio fragments featuring ordinary Dutch people on the phone. 

Many of the calls were between taxi drivers in The Hague but in one call she heard her ex-boyfriend’s voice. He used Vodafone and had not given permission for the company to share his conversations with anyone. 

The Volkskrant says it has email and other evidence to back up the woman’s claim. 

Appen is a technology company that develops software for converting speech into text. 

Vodafone told the Volkskrant it did not ‘collaborate’ with Appen. Appen said in a statement if it does collect data, it does so with the permission of ‘participants’. The company said it does not collaborate with ‘telecom companies’, but declined to answer the question whether this also applies to law enforcement agencies. 

Read the full article, in English

UK spy agency GCHQ offers apology to gay code breakers, including Alan Turing

The UK's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, has apologized for its ban on homosexuals, particularly in relation to legendary code breaker Alan Turing. The apology came on the same day it officially opened a Twitter account.

Deutsche Welle, 16 May 2016

Monument in Manchester to Alan Turing

The head of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has formally apologized for a ban on homosexuals which led to the dismissal and subsequent suicide of one of its best-ever code breakers, Alan Turing, in the 1950s.

Speaking on Monday, Robert Hannigan told a gay rights workplace conference in London that Turing had been an example to others as he had not been afraid to think "differently and radically."

Alan Turing portrait at the National Gallery

"(I want to) say how sorry I am that he and so many others were treated in this way," Hannigan said. "Their suffering was our loss." GCHQ's ban on homosexuals was only lifted in the 1990s. The life of Turing was featured in a recent film with Benedict Cumberbatch "The Imitation Game.'

"To do our job, which is solving some of the hardest technology problems the world faces for security reasons, we need all talents and we need people who dare to think differently and be different," Hannigan said.

While Turing, and other gay men were regarded as security risks by their employers, the UK's domestic spy agency MI5 was recently rated the country's most gay-friendly employer by campaign group Stonewall. Six years ago it was ranked 134 on the index.

A scene from 'The Imitation Game'

Now with an outward presence on Twitter

GCHQ rarely makes public pronouncements and so its entry to the world of social media made Monday a double-first. "We want GCHQ to be more accessible and to help the public understand more about our work," an unnamed spokesperson said. "We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology," maths and cyber-security.

The agency's first tweet "Hello, world" came with a background image of its ring-shaped building in Cheltenham, known locally as the "doughnut."

Hello, world. https://t.co/SROtSsE8KB

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

GCHQ presented itself as an agency "Where our brightest people bring together intelligence and technology to keep Britain safe."

The US Central Intelligence Agency, which joined Twitter in February 2014 and boasts 1.36 million followers, was concise in its welcome:

Welcome to Twitter @GCHQ! https://t.co/EmD8hGMRBv

— CIA (@CIA) May 16, 2016

Within two hours, GCHQ was testing the mental agility of its 16,300 new Twitter followers with a soccer-doku puzzle based on England and Wales' group in the upcoming Euro 2016 tournament in France:

Try our soccer-doku puzzle, fill in the gaps (3 pts win, 1 draw). Answers: 5pm https://t.co/L19xcgjV22 #MathsMonday pic.twitter.com/MufsT4QYaM

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

Others reflected on who the spy agency would follow from its official account, starting with a famous and fictitious operative:

Glad to see @GCHQ new Twitter account is following James Bond @007

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) May 16, 2016

jm/msh (Reuters, AFP)

Related Article:

Britain pardons code-breaking hero Alan Turing over homosexuality conviction

EU court rules against Facebook over transatlantic data deal

Yahoo – AFP, 6 Oct 2015

The 'Safe Harbour' agreement reached by the United States and European 

Commission in 2000 was based on the premise that US laws offered similar 

privacy protection to those in the European Union (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)

Luxembourg (AFP) - The European Union's top court on Tuesday ruled that a key transatlantic data sharing deal relied on by companies such as Facebook was invalid in the light of spying revelations in the Edward Snowden scandal.

In a major blow to US tech firms, the court said the 2000 "Safe Harbour" agreement between the United States and the EU did not sufficiently guarantee the protection of Europeans' personal data and must be struck out.

The stunning decision stems from a David-and-Goliath complaint against social media giant Facebook lodged against Irish authorities by Max Schrems, an Austrian law student privacy campaigner.

Austrian right-to-privacy activist Max

 Schrems waits for the verdict at the

 European Court of Justice (SCJ) in 

Luxembourg on October 6, 2015

 (AFP Photo/John Thys)

"The Court of Justice declares that the (European) Commission’s US Safe Harbour Decision is invalid," the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said in its three-page judgment.

The court said Irish authorities now had to decide whether transfer of data from Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended "on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of protection of personal data."

"YAY," Schrems tweeted after the judgment.

He later said in a statement that the decision was a "milestone when it comes to online privacy."

"It clarifies that mass surveillance violates our fundamental rights. This decision is a major blow for US global surveillance that heavily relies on private partners," he said.

Schrems filed the case against Ireland's data protection authority because Facebook's European headquarters are based there.

Major US web giants including Facebook and Apple have set up headquarters in Ireland to take advantage of favourable tax laws. Facebook data is then transferred to servers in the United States.

'Inaccurate assertions'

But Schrems had argued that the 15-year-old Safe Harbour deal is too weak to guarantee the privacy of European residents in the wake of details provided by former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Snowden.

The data deal allows data transfers by thousands of businesses on the grounds that US laws offer similar protection to those in the 28-nation European Union.

The European Commission -- the executive arm of the EU -- is widely expected to announce the imminent agreement of a new version of the Safe Harbour pact with the United States.

There was no immediate reaction to the judgment from Washington, but last month the United States said an opinion by the EU court's top legal counsel which reached similar conclusions was based on "inaccurate assertions".

Former NSA contractor Edward 

Snowden leaked details of the vast

 surveillance programs (AFP Photo)

The case comes amid widespread tensions between Brussels and Washington on issues of regulation, with several EU anti-trust probes currently underway into US tech firms.

"The United States does not and has not engaged in indiscriminate surveillance of anyone, including ordinary European citizens," the US mission to Brussels said in a statement last week.

"We fully respect the European Union's legal process; however, we believe that it is essential to comment in this instance because the Advocate General's opinion rests on numerous inaccurate assertions about intelligence practices of the United States."

Snowden, who remains wanted by the United States and currently lives in Moscow, opened a Twitter account last week, just days before the judgment.

His revelations showed that the NSA's PRISM programme used Silicon Valley giants Apple, Google and Facebook to gather user data.

In the wake of the scandal, the EU and Washington began talks to revamp Safe Harbour.

German citizens' communication data reportedly passed to NSA

Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency has for years passed data on German citizens to the NSA, according to media reports. All data on Germans was previously said to have been filtered out.

Deutsche Welle, 4 Oct 2014

From 2004 to 2008, raw data was siphoned from an internet exchange point in Frankfurt and forwarded to the NSA, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR reported on Friday.

The reports cited secret government documents submitted to the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into NSA spying.

It was first reported in June that the BND was handing information collected in Frankfurt to the NSA, codenamed "Eikonal," but information on German citizens was said to have been filtered out.

According to the latest Bundestag documents, however, BND internal tests showed that at least 5 percent of the German citizens' communications data could not be filtered.

An "absolute and mistake-free" separation of German and foreign citizens' communications is not possible, the secret documents said.

Frankfurt's DE-CIX internet exchange point is the largest in the world. Data streams from various internet providers meet there to be passed onto their respective destinations.

dr/jm (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

New privacy battle looms after moves by Apple, Google

Yahoo – AFP, Rob Lever, 1 Oct 2014

A new battle is brewing over privacy for mobile devices, after moves by Google

 and Apple to toughen the encryption of their mobile devices sparked complaints from

law enforcement (AFP Photo/Lluis Gene)

Washington (AFP) - A new battle is brewing over privacy for mobile devices, after moves by Google and Apple to toughen the encryption of their mobile devices sparked complaints from law enforcement.

The issue is part of a long-running debate over whether tech gadgets should have privacy-protecting encryption which makes it difficult for law enforcement to access in time-sensitive investigations.

FBI director James Comey reignited the issue last week, criticizing Apple and Google for new measures that keep smartphones locked down -- without even the company holding the keys to unlock the data.

FBI director James Comey reignited the

issue last week, criticizing Apple and Google

for new measures that keep smartphones

locked down (AFP Photo/Georges Gobet)

"What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law," the FBI chief said, warning that law enforcement may be denied timely access, even with a warrant, in cases ranging from child kidnapping to terrorism.

Former FBI criminal division chief Ronald Hosko made a similar point in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, citing a case in which the agency used smartphone data to solve a brutal kidnapping just in time to save the life of the victim.

"Most investigations don't rely solely on information from one source, even a smartphone," he said. "But without each and every important piece of the investigative puzzle, criminals and those who plan acts destructive to our national security may walk free."

Crypto Wars 2.0

Observers who follow privacy and encryption say they have seen this debate before.

In the mid-1990s, as the Internet was gaining traction, the government pressed for access to digital "keys" to any encryption software or hardware, before abandoning what ended up being a futile effort.

"This is Crypto Wars 2.0," says Joseph Hall of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital rights group active in both campaigns.

Today, "the main difference is that phones are increasingly deeply personal, containing much more daily life and interaction than a desktop from the 1990s" Hall said.

Hall argued that giving law enforcement access requires companies to "engineer vulnerabilities" which could be exploited by hackers or others.

"There's no way to tell the difference between a good guy and bad guy when they walk through the back door," he said.

Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the FBI has been making these arguments since 1995, with the same flawed logic.

"We've seen this movie before," Cohn said.

"Regulating and controlling consumer use of encryption was a monstrous proposal officially declared in 2001," she said in a blog post. "But like a zombie, it's now rising from the grave, bringing the same disastrous flaws with it."

In 2013, before the revelations of massive surveillance from leaked National Security Agency documents, the FBI called for broader authority to capture mobile communications which fall outside traditional surveillance, such as Skype and Google Hangouts.

But civil liberties activities say leaked NSA documents suggest that contrary to FBI claims made last year, the government has many tools at its disposal.

"There are an increasing number of places where we leave our digital trails," Hall said, including in the Internet cloud, where it can be accessed with a court order.

No back doors

Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society, said the FBI argument overlooks the fact US tech firms must compete in the global marketplace.

The issue is part of a long-running debate over whether tech gadgets should have

 privacy-protecting encryption which makes it difficult for law enforcement to

access in time-sensitive investigations (AFP Photo)

"Global customers do not want backdoored products any more than Americans do, and with very good reason," Granick writes on the "Just Security" blog.

"Authoritarian countries like Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia want to censor, spy on, and control their citizens' communications. These nations are just as able to make demands that Apple and Google decrypt devices as the FBI is, and to back up those demands with effective threats."

On balance, she said, "the public is more secure, not less secure, with the wide use of strong cryptography -- including cryptography without back doors."

Mike Janke, chief executive of the firm Silent Circle which makes the fully encrypted Blackphone, said the FBI is making a "false cry" against Google and Apple because the law enforcement agency can easily gain access to a phone -- through a carrier tap, or location tracking, for example.

Greater privacy, Janke said, comes from the harder encryption on Blackphone, but law enforcement can still track a user's location as long as the battery is inside.

While a small number of people may use encryption for nefarious purposes, Janke said, "do you sacrifice the privacy and trade secrets of everyone else because of that?"