You wouldn’t usually expect one of the authors of the Patriot Act to oppose giving the government greater access to company data. Then again, you wouldn’t expect a public debate on the limits of the Fourth Amendment to take place in a jazz club either.
But that was the scene Tuesday night in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary who co-wrote the sweeping national security law, joined forces with UC Berkeley Law professor Catherine Crump to argue that companies shouldn’t weaken encryption to help law enforcement.
