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January 6th panel's data requests hampered by encryption

2021-09-08 00:00:00

As the congressional panel investigating the January 6th morons' rebellion serves data requests to social media and other online entities, it is finding that encryption will stand in its way.



Politico:

Several of the companies that received preservation requests from the panel said they would comply to the best of their ability. Clint Smith, the chief legal officer at the chat platform Discord, said in a statement the company condemned the Jan. 6 violence and would "cooperate fully as appropriate." Rumble, a video platform popular with conservatives, said it would comply "with all valid law enforcement and investigative requests." But the encryption used on many of those services will limit the amount of data the select committee is able to gather if it does make a formal request or issue a subpoena for the actual messages, experts say. "They're not going to get everything," said James Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, of the select panel. A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on the encryption question.

While the Politico article presents a pretty interesting list of the usual tech companies, and their ability or lack thereof to share the data Congress is requesting, a former FBI person and digital rights activists caution Congress not to get its hopes up.
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