Will US Technology Companies Hand Over Encryption Keys To The U.S. Government?

FBI Director James Comey is holding back no punches in his quest to persuade American technology companies to hand over the encryption keys to their software that helps keep your data secure. Keeping my data out of the hands of thieves who might steal my Personally Identifiable Information for the purpose of identity theft is pretty important to me, so I question the efforts of James Comey and his attempt to compromise the integrity of these security mechanisms.

It’s important to understand what encryption is, and it is important to see why James Comey is concerned about terrorists using encryption to hide their communications. In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption will not prevent the interception of a message, but it will deny the content of the message to the interceptor. Simply put the process takes a message in plaintext, encrypts the message using an encryption algorithm, which generates ciphertext that can only be read if it is decrypted. The intended recipient of the message will use an encryption key to decrypt the message back to plaintext.

Encryption is used in a number of different ways. You can encrypt email messages between a sender and receiver to protect confidential information contained in the message such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, banking information, etc. Encryption also protects data on mobile devices. Today’s data phones carry a vast amount of personal information along with photos and videos that you might not want to share with others. Tablets and laptops are also common devices that should be encrypted. Anything mobile can easily be lost. If you encrypt the device, a key will be needed to decrypt and access it, preventing thieves or anyone who finds your lost device from accessing your information.

I will agree with Mr. Comey that terrorists do use encryption to hide communications between each other and that accessing that encrypted data could be beneficial to counterterrorism efforts. However, I unlike many, will not sacrifice my liberties for security. The N.S.A. and its warrantless wire taps demonstrated an abuse of power in the past, and I’m concerned that governments would use the power to decrypt messages at will or store and data mine encrypted communications of Americans. Mr. Comey will argue that suspect data would only be decrypted after getting a warrant, but that is questionable after considering the N.S.A. and previous warrantless wire taps.

If the U.S. government is serious about defending Americans against terrorist attacks, then the focus should be on gathering actionable intelligence, countering the recruitment strategies of terrorists and disrupting their social media campaigns. Any attempt to force technology companies to give up encryption keys would be demanded by other nations as well. Many of these nations will use the intelligence they gather to stifle human rights and silence opposition parties. Hackers and state sponsored terrorists would effectively destroy the most advanced method we have today of keeping our data private. That is one liberty I will not give up in the name of security and you shouldn’t either.