Surveillance
Government’s All-access Pass to Your Privacy

Government’s All-access Pass to Your Privacy

Time after time, the government has made a federal case about encryption, saying security concerns require access to everyone’s electronics. We expose their tries and lies. ...
C. Mitchell Shaw

The recent legal wrestling match between the FBI and Apple over encryption is not the first time the federal government has attacked the idea of private citizens using strong encryption to protect their data and communications. Throughout the months-long ordeal, which included legal battles, a public-relations war, and congressional testimony on whether Apple should be forced to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, one thing was clear: All of the Justice Department’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, this was about much more than whatever data may be on that one phone in this one case.

Evidence of that is found in recent attempts at federal legislation to both expand the surveillance state and essentially ban the use of encryption. While the FBI v. Apple case is illustrative, it is not singular and it did not happen in a vacuum.

Round One

To understand what is at stake here, it is important to look at the first round of what have been called the “Crypto Wars.” In 1991, a 37-year-old software engineer named Phil Zimmermann wrote an encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). PGP allowed anyone with a fairly modern computer and the ability to follow instructions to encrypt their e-mails in such a way that (1) the e-mail could be read only by the intended recipient, and (2) the e-mail could be digitally “signed” in such a way that the recipient could be sure it was sent by the sender and not by an imposter. He made it available for download on the Internet — which was fairly young, but quickly growing. He also published the source code of the program in old-fashioned book form and directly exported that book all over the world.

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