The term describing the growing inability of federal law enforcement to collect evidence from electronic communications over the Web is called what?

• A. Going dark
• B. Digital drift
• C. Packet loss
• D. Data drought

Answer: (A)

Going dark is the idea that federal law enforcement cannot readily access evidence from electronic communications because of encryption and privacy protections. As more messaging apps use end-to-end encryption and data moves to cloud services beyond immediate interception, investigators can’t easily read or retrieve payload content even with legal warrants. This term captures the shift from traditional, interceptable communications to environments where access is effectively blocked, even if a court order is issued. The other options don’t fit this concept: digital drift isn’t a standard law-enforcement term for this issue, packet loss refers to network transmission problems, and data drought isn’t used to describe the access problems caused by encryption.