Matt Burgess at Wired has a good summary article on the current (and always ongoing) debate concerning the availability of strong encryption.
In short, he sees three ‘classes’ of argument which are aimed at preventing individuals from protecting their communications (and their personal information) with robust encryption.
- Governments or law enforcement agencies are asking for backdoors to be built into encrypted platforms to gain “lawful access” to content. This is best exemplified by recent efforts by the United Kingdom to prevent residents from using Apple’s Advanced Data Protection.
- An increase in proposals related to a technology known as “client-side scanning.” Perhaps the best known effort is an ongoing European proposal to monitor all users’ communications for child sexual abuse material, notwithstanding the broader implications of integrating a configurable detector (and censor) on all individuals’ devices.
- The threat of potential bans or blocks for encrypted services. We see this in Russia, concerning Signal and legal action against WhatsApp in India.
In this broader context it’s worth recognizing that alleged Chinese compromises of key American lawful interception systems led the US government to recommend that all Americans use strongly encrypted communications in light of network compromises. If strong encryption is banned then there is a risk that there will be no respite from such network intrusions while, also, likely creating an entirely new domain of cyber threats.
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