If you’ve been keeping up with recent security news, you are most likely aware of the heated worldwide debate about encryption that is currently underway. Strong encryption is imperative to securing sensitive data and protecting individuals??? privacy online, yet governments around the world refuse to recognize this, and are continually aiming to break encryption in an effort to increase the power of their law enforcement agencies.
Governments have been trying for years to require that companies build backdoors, or deliberate weaknesses in encryption intended to provide easy access to encrypted data, into encrypted software and technology, arguing that unbroken encryption makes criminal investigations too difficult. The FBI has been using the term ???going dark??? since the late 90’s to describe the ???threat??? that strong encryption poses to omnipresent government surveillance.
This fear of strong, unbroken encryption is not only unfounded – it is dangerous. Encryption with built-in backdoors which provide special access for select groups not only has the potential to be abused by law enforcement and government agencies by allowing them to eavesdrop on potentially any digital conversation, it could also be easily exploited by threat actors and criminals.