London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

FBI Pushing Tech Firms to Write Own Backdoors Into Encrypted Messaging Apps, Director Tells Congress

FBI Pushing Tech Firms to Write Own Backdoors Into Encrypted Messaging Apps, Director Tells Congress

The US has on spurious grounds banned Chinese tech firms for ostensibly placing surveillance backdoors into their technology on behalf of the Chinese government. However, the head of the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation has revealed the law enforcement agency is pressuring tech firms to do just that.

During testimony to a US Senate panel on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau was working with tech giants and social media companies to monitor and crack down on “extremist” coordination in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former US President Donald Trump.

“Terrorism moves at the speed of social media,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting social media has become a “major factor” and catalyst for the efficient dissemination of extremist ideas in a decentralized way.

The federal police chief’s Tuesday testimony was his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the events of January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the national legislature and temporarily dispersed Congress in an attempt to reverse the outcome of the November 2020 election, which Trump lost. Four rioters and one Capitol Police officer died in the incident, which ultimately failed at its goal.

In the two months since the assault, the FBI has arrested more than 270 suspects, many on charges that include conspiracy and sedition. However, he noted on Tuesday that despite use of the term and enthusiasm for making it an official crime by many lawmakers, there is no specific charge for “domestic terrorism.” However, Wray did describe some of the insurrectionists as coming to Washington, DC, with “plans and intentions to engage in … domestic terrorism.”

The FBI chief indicated he would "welcome more tools in the toolbox" if lawmakers created such a charge, but noted that so far, his agents have been able to adequately charge suspects using the "tools they have." He further indicated the bureau needs to expand to meet the challenge posed by both left-wing and right-wing "extremists," noting a number of investigations are still underway dating to the nationwide protests against police brutality and white supremacy in the middle of 2020. He, along with many of the senators on the committee, readily equated anti-racist "anarchists" from those protests with the right-wing militia members who spearheaded the Capitol assault last month.

In the aftermath of the attack, social media giants clamped down on sympathetic posts and accounts, with Twitter alone banning 70,000 accounts that promoted the Qanon conspiracy theory that heavily underpinned much of the pro-Trump protests. Trump’s account was also suspended, and similar purges swept across YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms, while Parler, the messaging platform used by many of the perpetrators of the Capitol assault to coordinate their plans, was temporarily completely shut down.

However, it wasn’t just Trump supporters who found themselves silenced or punished by the tech giants, as a number of left-wing and independent pages and sites also saw their accounts temporarily shuttered or pages demonetized.

The FBI’s Problem With Social Media Encryption


“We try to work with social media companies to get them to more aggressively use their terms” of service to ‘police their own platforms,’” Wray told lawmakers.

Noting the incredible volume of violent rhetoric that appears all across social media, the FBI director said social media companies “play a huge role” in helping the Bureau identify valid threats that “crossed the line” from “aspirational” to “intentional,” helping them to separate wheat from chaff.

However, the partnership with social media goes further. Wray said that the FBI was “not trying to get backdoors” into devices or platforms, but noted that the Bureau has pressured tech firms to put such backdoors into apps, particularly ones that automatically encrypt data, such as Telegram or Signal, to “build in a way to have legal access when confronted with the proper legal authority so that they can get access to information and provide it in response to a warrant or court order.”

“This is a subject that I think the American people need to understand because the decisions that affect the life and blood of Americans all over this country, which normally are made by our elected representatives, are, in effect, getting made in corporate offices in big technology companies,” Wray said.

Wray’s comments effectively mirror those by researchers such as Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer at Facebook who is presently director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, a group that partners closely with the US government to crack down on alternate narratives, which they call “disinformation.”

“The ability to do academic research on what’s happening online has never been worse,” Stamos told Reuters in a July 2019 interview. “What you get is everything encrypted and everything locked up and not available to researchers.”

Stamos has in turn pressured tech giants to hand over user data for “academic” purposes, including backdoor access to user and ad data via API gateways, turning the SIO into what Wired called “his data clearinghouse.”

While multiple lawmakers asked Wray about the FBI’s use of metadata or geolocation data from suspects’ phones or data from their banks on purchases made in DC, Wray refused to confirm or deny the use of those tools in the January 6 investigation, only noting they are “tools in the toolbox” that he “would not be surprised to learn” were being used in certain cases. However, he specifically denied the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants or national security letters.

Norfolk FBI Report


A major subject of this signal-to-noise ratio concern has been the report by the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that identified the severe nature of the threat posed by some of the people going to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6 several days beforehand.

Last month, Steven Sund, who was serving as the chief of US Capitol Police during the attack, but resigned afterward, told lawmakers that he did not get the Norfolk report before January 6. The evidence might have been enough to overcome the intransigence from the Senate and House sergeants-at-arms and from the Pentagon in the fact of repeated requests for National Guard support in the days leading up to January 6, as well as during the attack itself. As Sputnik has reported, the “optics” of having US troops fighting US citizens in the shadow of the national legislature was repeatedly cited as justification for their hesitation.

Wray told lawmakers Tuesday that the Norfolk report, which warned people going to Washington intended to wage “war,” was viewed as “unverified information” at the time and not immediately obviously accurate. He noted how the agency struggles to separate signal from noise, as well as telling which violent rhetoric online is “aspirational” versus “intentional.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
×