In an interview with Yahoo News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff published today, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers declared that the terrorists involved in last November’s attacks in Paris used at least some encrypted communications to plan their actions, preventing NSA from being able to warn French officials in advance. Because of encrypted communications, he said, “we did not generate the insights ahead of time. Clearly, had we known, Paris would not have happened.”
Rogers did not explicitly re-launch the campaign waged by FBI director James Comey to force technology companies to provide a “golden key” to encrypted communications. Rogers called encryption “foundational to our future” and added that arguing over encryption backdoors was “a waste of time.”
