http://www.tomsguide.com/us/obama-crypto-letter,news-20947.html
A who's who of Silicon Valley tech giants, computer-security experts and advocacy groups asked President Barack Obama to reject police "backdoors" for smartphone and computer encryption in an open letter sent today (May 19). "We urge you to reject any proposal that U.S. companies deliberately weaken the security of their products," said the letter. "We request that the White House instead focus on developing policies that will promote rather than undermine the wide adoption of strong encryption technology."
Signatories include Apple, Google, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, plus more than 40 other companies and trade groups. Joining in were nearly 40 mostly left-leaning and libertarian public-advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and nearly 60 technology experts.
The letter is the strongest tech-industry response yet to renewed demands by the Justice Department and the FBI that law-enforcement personnel retain a secret method — a police "backdoor" theoretically unavailable to ordinary citizens and, presumably, criminals and foreign spies — of reading commercially encrypted messages and data. Otherwise, officials fear, police may lose access to suspects' files and communications, a phenomenon known as "going dark."