Encryption backdoors: The brief history of an oxymoron
Over the past year, we’ve heard politicians the world over discussing the need for governments to be able to bypass encryption. Major Silicon Valley powers like Apple and Google have repeatedly told lawmakers that they can’t be given access to the encrypted services they provide for their users, with or without a warrant, because they don’t have that access themselves – only the user has the encryption key.
That’s where we see pushback from law enforcement and intelligence agencies who claim that this standard is unacceptable and allows criminals and terrorists to plot freely, away from the eyes of the law. Their solution? Create a backdoor into encryption that allows the government to access encrypted data, while still keeping it safe for everyone else.
It feels as if every month or so we see the US and UK governments pushing for a new encryption backdoor. The flavor of the month is currently Feinstein and Burr’s draft encryption bill which would essentially make all encryption illegal in the US. Under a new name or repackaged into a new bill, we see this same proposal emerge again and again, no matter how often tech companies, cybersecurity experts, and even the White House, have to bat it away as fantasy.
