F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said Wednesday that investigators could not read more than 100 text messages exchanged by one of the attackers in a shooting this year in Garland, Tex., because they were encrypted, adding fuel to law enforcement agencies’ contention that they need a way to circumvent commercially available encryption technology.
Comey, who two months ago appeared to have lost a battle inside the Obama administration over forcing companies like Apple and Google to give investigators a way to decode messages, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the attackers “exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist” the morning of the shooting, the New York Times reports.

