The argument that encryption is one kind of a human right or any kind of threat to our national security, goes back to the previous days of the Internet in the 1990s and it is still going strong today.
We are not as sincere as to see that this article itself will once and for all try to put a finish to the debate, but hopefully, it will shine some light on this and also will help you in watching both sides of the argument. The law enforcement agencies are in full control of the privacy advocates, who are adamantly against any backdoor access.
So, without any attempt to add the unpleasant or unwanted oil to the fire that is somehow our encryption- debate, let’s try to find out if encryption is a threat to national security or not.
Why is Law Enforcement Officials Against Encrypted Data?
So what are the intelligence agencies having against end-to-end encryption?
Well, it’s so simple. Fully encrypted communications and sensible data information may not be easily read by federal agencies.
This is acceptable and it makes their complete job very difficult and there have been so many examples where the criminals and the terrorists similarly have used the encrypted traffic to cover the actions in a better way.
Ultimately, the complete idea of this end-to-end encryption is to don’t allow anybody without protection keys just to find the way that what sensitive information is completely stored in that communication.
However, law enforcement officials generally argue that encryption may be used to stash such criminal activities, that is the reason they do argue for the back-door access and also go similarly to try and to force the technology companies to make their security weak by giving encryption back-doors that will easily allow the law enforcement access.
One may be an attempt made by the “FBI” when they had tried to force the “Apple” to do it and hence had unlocked the whole encrypted device of one of the criminals in the Inland-Regional-Center in San-Bernardino in failure of the California terrorist attack.
In response to the court order, Apple did refuse to make its encryption standards weak and hence said that it may threaten the protection of the customers and announced a public discussion or debate on this issue.
You can check our attitude on the back-door encryption and if the government may force private companies to give this in the article.
Why Weaker Encryption & Not Strong Encryption is one Threat to National-Security?
Encryption is one kind of a danger to our national security and also to our interests, but only if we are talking about weaker encryption.
This is due to the requirement that technological companies give back-door access to the encrypted data that would reduce our national security by-
- Making the weakest encrypted communications that may be accessed by the international countries. Let’s not be sincere, the Cold, old War may have finished with the breakup of the Soviet Union, but there is a new, cyber Cold War going on today and the countries such as Russia & China represent a very serious cyber-threat or danger to the United States.
- Lowering data security and protection of the information security over foreign networks and that national security agency relies on.
Just as the hackers are continuously trying to receive the data of the Internet users, the same goes for foreign adversaries who want to access sensitive information security held by the government.
The security threat from the international adversaries is manifested in-
- The cyber-threats like attacks that hackers are trying to use, to discover the vulnerabilities and the weaknesses in the data-systems to take the access to the information of utility to the national protection.
- To do Attacks to the transport layer of our electronic- communication where sensitive information runs and the encryption products.
How Encryption Enhances Your Data Security?
Surely, it is very much wrong to claim that only criminals try to use encryption programs.
More private citizens do the same in an attempt to save their kind of data and electronic communication.
It does not mean that you may be subject to criminal investigations just by encrypting your stored data.
You may want to normally stop somebody not authorized such as hackers from accessing your protective data like- medical-data or finance-related data
Or you may be a whistle-blower or just a journalist and you want some strong encryption to save the sensible information and data that you are having, from one government agency.
Whatever the case it is, encryption is the only key to ensure the data- integrity and encryption systems reduce the privacy and safety risks instead of raising as opponents claim.