FBI Battling Encryption Is Bad for Privacy

Privacy is a double-edged sword: while netizens around the world see it as a blessing, authorities consider it a potential danger. The FBI in particular has a long-running beef with encryption: the bureau thinks that the ability to hide your virtual activity poses a serious threat to society, since terrorists, criminals and drug dealers could benefit from anonymity.

In that regard, the FBI came up with a solution that is way too straightforward: they intend to either put a backdoor into encryption systems or make it ‘responsible’ by weakening it.

Encryption sabotaging the FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is bent on bringing down encryption for years now. And from their perspective, the fight is completely justified: according to the numbers shared by director Christopher Wray, the FBI failed to crack open around 7,000 digital devices in 2017, meaning that almost half of their attempts fell flat. Wray warned users that devices locked virtually impair the FBI’s effort to investigate criminal activities, such as terrorism, narcotics, gang activity and child exploitation, just to name a few.

The Going Dark initiative

Even though the FBI’s intentions of protecting us are noble, their methods are more than questionable. Who doesn’t remember the case when the FBI asked Apple to provide backdoor access to a terrorist’s iPhone? Tim Cook refused to play along, which led to a court case and an ugly feud none of the participants wanted to begin with.

However, the FBI’s obsession with encryption dates back even further. In 2009 they requested $9 million for their Going Dark Initiative, and that amount was used for advanced electronic surveillance and intelligence collection. Said initiative is not only an integral part of the FBI’s program ever since, but it also inflated up to $38 million in 2017. It’s safe to say that they are gearing up for protecting the nation, even if it comes at the cost of our privacy.

A grim future is coming?

The idea of backdoor access to our phones and computers is rather terrifying. In itself, the FBI’s desire to have a skeleton key to all of our devices is not only dubious, but it also fails to guarantee that it will be kept exclusive to law enforcement forces. If the police can crack phones, then it wouldn’t take much time to have the tool leaked to the black market, allowing petty criminals to access our most sensible with ease.

Besides, when terrorists get wind of the government’s actions, they immediately turn to foreign encryption services and use programs without backdoor access. Waging war against encryption is an uphill battle, since technology constantly keeps on changing and evolving. Therefore, any progress that the FBI could achieve would harm people tenfold.