During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) warned against the creation of a national surveillance database using Americans' data.
00:00I now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Raskin, for his opening statement.
00:08Mr. Chairman, thank you very much and welcome to our witnesses. I appreciate your being here with us.
00:14Living in the digital age in America means that much of our connection with other people takes place over the Internet.
00:21We message with friends and family and co-workers over our cell phone apps.
00:26We store documents in the cloud and we share materials over email.
00:30End-to-end encrypted services promise that no one, not Apple, not Google, not the government, federal, state or local, can access the messages that we send.
00:40And these platforms are increasingly counted upon by users wishing for the privacy of a protected face-to-face conversation in the new era of technology that we inhabit.
00:51Imagine pulling out your phone, opening up an app you've been told is secure, and sending a message to a friend.
00:57Now imagine learning that the app is not end-to-end encrypted as promised.
01:01Instead, the government has ordered the service provider to make its security weaker so the government can demand access to your message.
01:09Imagine the government told the platform that they couldn't tell a soul about this arrangement.
01:15Well, that's exactly what the United Kingdom secretly ordered Apple to do recently, and that's the reason that we're here today.
01:22Requiring Apple to secretly build a so-called backdoor into its advanced data protection service would make users' end-to-end encrypted documents no longer secure as expected.
01:34Law enforcement officers, not just in the U.K., but also in the U.S., could demand Apple produce users' content and metadata from the cloud.
01:42And cybercriminals would be able to exploit this system weakness introduced by the backdoor to target Americans for espionage, consumer fraud, and ransomware.
01:53Backdoors to encrypted technology are not capable, as the chairman said, only of letting good guys in while keeping the bad guys out.
02:02Backdoors are intentional designed weaknesses in an encrypted technology's mathematical formula.
02:08These design weaknesses can be exploited by foreign governments seeking to compromise our national security, steal our intellectual property, and monitor us in our daily lives and workplaces.
02:21Congress passed the Cloud Act in 2018 to allow for data-sharing agreements between the U.S. and countries that meet required standards.
02:28Through its negotiated agreement with the U.S., U.K. law enforcement can access non-encrypted data transmitted by U.S. providers that is relevant to their law enforcement recommendations.
02:39While secret orders like the technical capability notice the Home Office placed on Apple have nothing to do with the data-sharing agreement or the Cloud Act,
02:48they are only worthwhile to the U.K. because of the data that is made available through the agreement.
02:54I, for one, believe that the Cloud Act and the U.S.-U.K. data-sharing agreement thus far have been beneficial, both to U.S. companies and to our country.
03:02But I also believe that forcing companies to circumvent their own encrypted services in the name of security is the beginning of a dangerous, slippery slope.
03:10And I look forward to hearing from the witnesses as to what, if anything, we need to do to change to prevent future similar orders against other companies.
03:19Some argue that privacy is passe. Yesterday's news. Cookies monitor which websites we click on.
03:27Our devices already track every step we take. And data brokers take anonymized data and re-identify it in portfolios available to the highest bidder.
03:36But I disagree with the idea that privacy is no longer valuable or meaningful to the American citizenry.
03:42In a country where visa holders are being detained simply for opinions they've expressed or an op-ed they wrote,
03:49where criticism of the administration can result in a visit from the Secret Service,
03:54and where the staff of members of Congress can be arrested and handcuffed just for doing their jobs.
04:01American security from government intrusion has never been more urgent or important.
04:06The deluge of ways new technology enables the government to spy on their citizens makes it even more important that Americans stand up to increases in state surveillance.
04:17Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788 that the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.
04:25Well, we have to resist that natural tendency.
04:28A week ago, the Trump administration announced it would hire Palantir to consolidate Americans' data into dossiers on all U.S. citizens.
04:37The plan to use Palantir's Foundry project to organize and analyze data across agencies into one big, beautiful dossier is chilling.
04:46It's the beginning of an effort to create a national citizen database, which would be vulnerable to manipulation,
04:53not just by outside actors, but by inside political actors, from bank account numbers and student debt totals to medical claims and disability status.
05:02The administration today is taking information that was previously siloed into different categories as required under the law
05:10and using it to create one big, beautiful surveillance apparatus that can be used to crush resistance, to profile Americans, and to silence dissent.
05:21We're here today to discuss the CLOUD Act.
05:23I recognize this, but we should also recognize none of these issues exist in a vacuum.
05:28All government surveillance curtails all citizens' liberties.
05:32It is not always immediate.
05:34Often it's a slow decay and erosion, but every chip in our civil liberties foundation brings us that much closer to a government
05:41that no longer has its foundational and necessary ideological checks against total control of the citizenry.
05:49Surveillance databases like the one contemplated by the Trump administration should remain the stuff of science fiction and authoritarian governments,
05:57not a reality for a country founded on the principles of democratic self-government and freedoms and rights for the people.
06:04In the case of the UK order, we can start with an easy first step.
06:08We don't need legislation to pass in the divided House or frozen Senate.
06:12The Trump DOJ can just do its job.
06:14The U.S. should not sit idly by and watch the Home Office issue perhaps more secret orders against U.S. companies.
06:21But thus far, that's exactly what the DOJ has done.
06:24I sincerely hope that we move quickly to change that.
06:28I thank Chairman Biggs and Chairman Jordan for holding a second bipartisan surveillance hearing,
06:32and I look forward to working across the aisle with my friends as we prepare for the expiration of FISA Section 702 next year.
