DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
(U//FOUO) National Domestic Communications Assistance Center Presentation: Quantifying Law Enforcement’s “Going Dark” Problem
March 4, 2019
The following presentation was obtained from the public website of a professional organization for prosecutors.

Quantifying Law Enforcement’s “Going Dark” Problem: Statistics Collection Tool
Page Count: 20 pages
Date: January 27, 2017
Restriction: For Official Use Only
Originating Organization: Department of Justice, National Domestic Communications Assistance Center
File Type: pdf
File Size: 2,780,451 bytes
File Hash (SHA-256): C0F20581F51C4D6C1132647470301B511E0366ED7E12BD7B315425BC906DE077

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https://info.publicintelligence.net/NDCAC-StatisticsCollectionTool.pdf

Strategic Gap
• As a result of the fundamental shift in communications services and technologies, criminal and national security investigations are unable to obtain needed evidence and intelligence despite having the legal authority to do so

Impediments
• We continue to lose ground to rapidly-changing global communications services and technologies
• Public disclosures have created an environment that makes even the discussion of new lawful intercept legislation very difficult and provider cooperation tenuous
• Regulatory process is not timely and judicial process unproductive
• Stakeholders in legislative process have different equities
• Industry is very organized and proactive in its opposition to the development of new capabilities and legislation

Encrypted Communications Applications

Modern communication applications have begun to implement encryption on data in motion, resulting in law enforcement’s inability to access the plain text of data in transit (intercepted)

Challenges with Record Requests

The lack of a mandate on the retention of communications metadata or content and the increasing globalization of communication services have greatly complicated law enforcement’s ability to obtain information on historical communications

Device-Based Encryption

Communication devices have begun to deploy encryption on stored data, resulting in law enforcement’s inability to access the plain text of data stored on a device or system (or cloud)

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