Security vs. Surveillance As framed in the media, encryption debates are about whether law enforcement should have surreptitious access to data, or whether companies should be allowed to provide strong encryption to their customers. This obscures the most important aspects of the encryption issue: the security it provides against a much wider variety of threats. Encryption secures our data and communications against eavesdroppers like criminals, foreign governments, and terrorists. Many technological security failures of today can be traced to failures of encryption. Vodafone built backdoor access into Greece's cell phone network for the Greek government; it was used against the Greek government in 2004-2005. We're not being asked to choose between security and privacy. We're being asked to choose between less security and more security. In the mid-1990s, cryptographers argued that escrowing encryption keys with central authorities would weaken secur...
Trends in security and surveillance industry