Apple and Google are among the 150 tech firms urging President Obama to reject backdoors that allow law enforcement to view decrypted smartphone data.
Led by New America's Open Technology Institute, the tech giants penned a letter to the White House that says "strong encryption is the cornerstone of the modern information economy's security."
Last year, Google and Apple announced that the latest versions of their mobile operating systems (iOS 8 and Lollipop) would have encryption turned on by default. That, however, prompted concern from agencies like the FBI and NSA, who were worried they would not be able to monitor cell phone chatter during investigations.
"What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law," FBI Director James Comey said last year.
He pushed tech companies to add a loophole that allowed for government access in extreme cases, like those involving a child kidnapper or a court order, for example.
Technologists, however, argue that the only way to allow that access is to build a "backdoor," or a separate key to unlock the data, which might also be exploited by hackers.
"Whether you call them 'front doors' or 'back doors,' introducing intentional vulnerabilities into secure products for the government's use will make those products less secure against other attackers," the letter said.
The letter is also signed by a number of security experts and trade groups. They all urge the White House to support the recommendations released in Dec. 2013 by the Review Group on Intelligence, which "unanimously recommended" that the feds "fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards; not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and increase the use of encryption and urge U.S. companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage."
Apple, Google, and the White House did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.