Dean Garfield, president and ceo of The ITIC, which represents global technology companies including Qualcomm, Altera, Texas Instruments and Samsung, among others, stated: “Weakening security with the aim of advancing security simply does not make sense.
“Encryption is a security tool we rely on everyday to stop criminals from draining our bank accounts, to shield our cars and airplanes from being taken over by malicious hacks, and to otherwise preserve our security and safety.”
The statement comes after many politicians criticised the data-scrambling systems that tech firms are apply to hardware and services.
They have called for encryption to be weakened in order to help police and intelligence services catch criminals or prevent potential terror attacks. Others want backdoors included in encryption software that would give law enforcement access to data that is otherwise locked away.
But, the ITIC warned that weakening encryption in a bid to help the "good guys” would actually create vulnerabilities to be exploited by the “bad guys”, and that such a move "would almost certainly cause serious physical and financial harm across our society and our economy".
