Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: CIA director John Brennan told U.S. senators they shouldn’t worry about mandatory encryption backdoors hurting American businesses. And that’s because, according to Brennan, there’s no one else for people to turn to: if they don’t want to use U.S.-based technology because it’s been forced to use weakened cryptography, they’ll be out of luck because non-American solutions are simply “theoretical.” Thus, the choice is American-built-and-backdoored or nothing, apparently. The spymaster made the remarks at a congressional hearing on Thursday after Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) questioned the CIA’s support for weakening cryptography to allow g-men to peek at people’s private communications and data. Brennan said this was needed to counter the ability of terrorists to coordinate their actions using encrypted communications. The director denied that forcing American companies to backdoor their security systems would cause any commercial problems.

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Source: Slashdot – Non-US Encryption Is ‘Theoretical’, Claims CIA Chief In Backdoor Debate