The FBI's repeated success in overcoming its “going dark” problem belie the protestations that it's an existential threat. In some ways, Anom shows just how creative the agency's workarounds can be. Researchers caution, though, that as more governments around the world seek the power to demand digital backdoors—and as some, like Australia, implement such laws—authorities could also point to the Anom case as evidence that special access works.
“It seems like from there it's not rhetorically that big of a leap to say, ‘This worked so well, wouldn’t it be nice if every app had a backdoor?’ Which is literally what law enforcement in the US has said it wants,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. If being able to surveil every message on Anom was so effective, the FBI might say, why not simply do it more, and in more places?
Extraordinary Circumstances
It's important not to extrapolate too broadly from the Anom experience. According to the documents released this week, the FBI went to great lengths to work under foreign laws and avoid surveilling Americans throughout the three-year initiative. And there's no immediate threat of the FBI being able to deploy a totally backdoored system inside the United States. The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable” search and seizure, and sets out a clear foundation for government warrant requirements. Furthermore, continuous surveillance orders like wiretap warrants are intentionally even more difficult for law enforcement to obtain, because they authorize expansive bulk surveillance. But, as the National Security Agency’s PRISM program showed, unchecked domestic digital surveillance programs ar ..
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