Authorities can't be trusted to keep encryption keys safe, say security specialists

San Francisco

AN elite group of code makers and code breakers is taking American and British intelligence and law enforcement agencies to task in a new paper that evaluates government proposals to maintain special access to encrypted digital communications.

On Tuesday, the group - 13 of the world's pre-eminent cryptographers, computer scientists and security specialists - were to release the paper, which concludes that there is no viable technical solution that would allow the US and British governments to gain "exceptional access" to encrypted communications without putting the world's most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger.

The report was to be released a day before James Comey Jr, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Sally Quillian Yates, the deputy attorney-general at the Justice Department, are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the concerns that they and other government agencies have about "going dark" - the fear that new encryption technologies will prevent them from monitoring the communications o…