Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Negating encryption

Encryption is a way to prevent others from accessing your data. Like the rest of the programming world, it is not perfect as all encryption systems are created by fallible human beings. But it works pretty well. Now the governments of the U.S. and Britain want to negate the value of encryption.

The governments want the developers of these systems to supply them with the keys to decoding encrypted data. Apparently, the governments think that their workers are superhuman and will make it impossible for anyone else - such as a hacker - to get access to these keys.

A group of world-class cryptologists believes that, “Such access will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend. The costs would be substantial, the damage to innovation severe and the consequences to economic growth hard to predict. The costs to the developed countries’ soft power and to our moral authority would also be considerable.” A couple of good reasons why the government should not be so fear-ridden.

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