This interview Ron Wyden did with Oregon Public Radio includes a lot of what you might expect from him, including an argument that weakening encryption makes us less safe, including possibly exposing kids (because their location gets identified) to pedophiles.
But the most interesting part of this interview are the three times Ron Wyden made it clear, in his inimitable fashion, that someone better ask NSA whether they can decrypt this phone. To me, the interview sounds like this:
Let me tell you what I think is noteworthy here. This is a fight between FBI and Apple. I think it’s noteworthy that nobody has heard from the NSA on this. [around 2:00]
And I want to come back to the fact that the NSA has not been heard from on this and I think that that is noteworthy. [before 7:25]
[After finally being asked what he had heard from NSA] I’m on the intelligence committee, so I’m bound, I take an oath, to not get into classified matters so I’m just going to, uh, leave that there with respect to the NSA. [at 8:30]
We’ve had experts like Susan Landau and Richard Clarke insist that NSA can get into this phone. Jim Comey, in testimony before HJC, sort of dodged by claiming that NSA doesn’t have the ability to get into a phone with this particular configuration.
But Ron Wyden sure seems to think the NSA might have more to say about that.
Golly, I can’t imagine what he thinks the NSA might have to offer about this phone.