Encryption Hinders Murder, Sex, Drug Probes, Officials Say

The use of strong encryption is preventing state and local police across the U.S. from fully investigating murders, sex offenses against children, drug cases and child pornography, according to law enforcement officials who will testify before a House panel. The officials plan to come to the hearing armed with emotional pleas, evidence of stalled investigations and statistics to back up their arguments that companies including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are making criminal investigations increasingly difficult by using encryption, which scrambles data with a code that can be unlocked only with a special key.