(Congressional Agenda) – Federal law enforcement authorities are still trying to nail down why 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump last month. A motive has seemingly eluded those looking into the matter, with a potentially huge piece of evidence, apps on the shooter’s phone, being heavily encrypted. This has prompted a conversation over whether or not Big Tech companies should give law enforcement agencies access to backdoor methods in order to break these encryptions.
As per a new report from Fox News, “Weeks before the attempt on Trump’s life, the Secret Service received intelligence warning of an Iranian plot to kill the former president, according to federal law enforcement officials. But while experts are skeptical of any connection between the 20-year-old would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and Iran, they haven’t been able to access some of his communications 18 days later.”
As of now it is unclear who Crooks might have been talking with, if anyone, and what topics of conversation might have been discussed.
“I think we’ve experienced a range of returns because some of the applications that he was using online were encrypted in nature,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate went on to say during a Senate hearing Tuesday while being questioned by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham.
Agents at the bureau have managed to get access to some of Crooks’ emails, Abbate revealed, but there are still other communications that remain encrypted.
“If he were talking to some foreign power, and I don’t think any foreign power would hire this guy, by the way, so I’m not overly worried, but if this was some great plot by the Iranians, how do we solve this?” Graham went on to ask during the hearing.
He brings up an excellent point. Crooks failed to get onto his high school’s rifle team due to poor marksmanship. He has no military experience whatsoever. In other words, there aren’t a whole lot of things he could possibly bring to the table. And that begs the question. How did such an unskilled individual get one over on the Secret Service?
“Senator, you know, as we’ve been saying, we need a solution that provides lawful access,” Abbate told the senator.
“The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been seeking – unsuccessfully – backdoor access to encrypted data for years. And while lawmakers have been reluctant to demand it facing privacy and due process concerns, apps that facilitate encrypted communications have become popular not only with private individuals, but also terrorist groups, criminal cartels, drug traffickers and other criminals. They are easy to obtain on Apple and Android phones – and often free to use,” Fox News reported.
It’s mind-blowing that Crooks managed to climb on top of a roof that was less than 150 yards from a former president and current presidential nominee and fire off shots at him. How did a failed marksman get so close to killing a former president as to wound his ear? So many questions yet so few answers.
And since an additional threat on Trump’s life came out of Iran shortly after the assassination attempt, are the two things related? Could there be information contained in these still-encrypted messages that might hold the answer? Is getting the answer worth potentially providing the federal government with tools they could use to spy on Americans?
“The terrorist regime of Iran have been targeting people, our country, for many, many years now,” Abbate said to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat during the hearing. “We’ve talked about that here before. We know, publicly, they’ve targeted former President Trump. They’ve called for his assassination.”
As of now, Abbate stated there’s no evidence to suggest that Crooks was working with anyone else. And again, given his lack of skills, it’s hard to see why any foreign actor would want to work with him, knowing his chance of failure and their chance of discovery would be extremely high.
“Many current and former law enforcement officials have argued that a hard-coded decryption method would aid them as they try to protect the public from major threats. On the other hand, opponents of a digital master key say it would create both a privacy risk for law-abiding individuals and a vulnerability that criminal hackers could exploit,” Fox noted. “The government has unsuccessfully been seeking backdoor access into Big Tech encryption for years, according to Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector and counterterrorism expert.”
“Encrypted or not, you have to do what we’ve been doing in our system for 250 years — get a warrant,” Mauro remarked in an interview with Fox News Digital. “But by creating encryption that the creators themselves cannot decrypt — you have obliterated the role of the judges. Really, the only ‘judge’ now is whoever can decrypt.”
Let’s hope there’s some sort of solution that will enable Americans to retain their privacy while also providing law enforcement with tools they can utilize to crack the encryption.
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