Battle of Encryption versus the Government

The Problem with Governments and Data Security

Steve Smith talks about the backwards issues that implicate encryption and how the government wishes you to believe that it helps criminals, pedophiles and terrorists, when the opposite is far more true. You are protected from them by encryption.

Episode #6-25 released on March 7, 2016

Watch on Youtube

We have all seen the headlines, how the Court Judge, at the demand of the FBI, wants Apple to unlock an iPhone for the FBI. And, while the reason seems to have some importance, I'd like to concentrate on a very specific issue that will arise as many people such as myself will always push for more and more secure communications.

Encryption is math, and math cannot be changed, we all know this. Natural math in itself is the easiest to demonstrate where two plus two will always equal four, unless you put a backdoor in it. And, this is the issue, Backdoors.

There will always be someone who will want a backdoor, and there will always be more who want a closed system that is fully encrypted. And the continuous unethical push from Governments to spy on the users will claims that include terrorism, crimes, pedophilia, etc. will always be greeted with shame by those like myself that know that they are screaming wolf, when sheep are the only ones present.

The problem is the bad guys will always have encryption, it is easy to create and modify devices to use this, but breaking encryption one it is deployed is easier said than done. The biggest issue is the amount of resources that is required to break encryption, and frankly this is by design. You do not want anyone to access communications at any point, now, in the future or from the past. Which leads me to my next point, we are going to be seeing two sets of evolutions become common place with encryption. One evolution includes the process of making the key used per user different for each unique user using a device, or service which will render any current key unable to decrypt information from any other session. And, the other evolution being worked on, the ability to detect if an encrypted message has been compromised.

Why are these being created, because of the sheer number of threats to our data, whether from criminals, terrorists, dictatorships and governments gone bad. This is why encryption is important, not to protect the bad guy, but to protect the entire rest of the world from them. And, while other crimes will continue to exist, pushing hard against them will only cause an arms race that will lead to even better encryption methods and practices. And, this arms race is important to every single person out there who wishes to have their data safe and secure in an age of cloud services, and mobile devices. And, I for one, do not agree with any government that a Backdoor is a viable solution to this data blackout. Because there is really a limited scope in which the government even bothered with online data, and before that there was almost no encryption anyway. In order to have a black out, you need to have had access to the media itself, and that makes their claims bogus. Many more crimes are solved through traditional methods which can stand up in court far more easily, and can be far more easily understood jurors.

The only thing the Government, and the court system in the USA has succeeded in doing is having many of the biggest technology driven companies backing Apple, and all their clients, and for this, future clients are happy. Apple stance is based on Morality and Economics, and this means that the client, this time, Wins.

And for this many people, like myself, because of past issues, current and predictable future ones have become annoyed severely because Governments and policing agencies have become abusive in their attempts at obtaining data itself, and it will lead to many like-minded people who will NEVER release information, whether the process used by Governments and policing agencies is valid out not. Encryption will be made stronger, unbreakable, and of course, in accessible from the owner, by design, and with thought of the future.

Data that is accessible to anyone, is accessible to everyone, and this means protecting data comes at the cost of accessibility.

As a future note, apparently even the United Nations has indicated to the United States, that going through with this would cause a dangerous International precedent.

Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions

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