Surveillance And The Encryption Boogeyman

In January of this year, British Prime Prime Minister David Cameronlet it be known that he intended to dumb down encryption so that law enforcement could monitor all of the information streaming across the country. A direct attempt to capitalize on the Paris attacks. This was an unfortunate overture against encryption and privacy in general. Sure, he is stumping for votes with his electoral base but, this is by no means the first or the last time this sort of rhetoric has popped up.

Today news about a police chief with Europol was advocating against encryption as it gives criminals a leg up.

From BBC:

A European police chief says the sophisticated online communications are the biggest problem for security agencies tackling terrorism.

Hidden areas of the internet and encrypted communications make it harder to monitor terror suspects, warns Europols Rob Wainwright.

Tech firms should consider the impact sophisticated encryption software has on law enforcement, he said.

The irony being that the Europol website defaults to TLS 1.2. This is security technology designed to protect communications across a network. When I check the connection to the Europol website it presents this message, Your connection to http://www.europol.europa.eu is encrypted with modern cryptography. I cant help but chuckle.

The part of this that troubles me is that this comes on the heels of the Cameron statements about encryption. Now we hear about this from a law enforcement organization. The spectre of the terrorist boogeyman is getting trotted out more often. The difficulty is that this use of fear uncertainty and doubt will have unfortunate repercussions for perfectly innocent people.

Make no mistake, there is a need for law enforcement to have mechanisms in place to combat crime but, they have those. They are called laws. The problem here is that law enforcement and government have found that there are easier ways to get the information they want/need. The documents Edward Snowden leaked illustrated that this has become a serious problem.

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Surveillance And The Encryption Boogeyman