Why Is The Government Backdoor Of Encryption

Over the past few years, there are been instances of sensitive information being leaked to the public. In the summer of 2013, a sub-contracted National Security Agency (NSA) employee by the name of Edward Snowden released information on their surveillance programs. As a result of the government practices, businesses have paid more attention to securing their services. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has called on Apple to create a version of iOS that can be used to help decrypt a county-owned iPhone that was used by a terrorist. (Deluca 2016) Government backdoors in encryption can help law enforcement solve or prevent crimes, cause a violation of privacy, and can cause the encrypted data to be insecure. The history of cryptography

The issue with encryption is that, not only do law-abiding citizens use it, so do criminals. Criminals and terrorists can use cryptography to hide their next move, their plans, or their conversations with others. If law enforcement had a way to bypass the security that was put into place by criminals they could have information to prevent premeditated crimes from happening or have the information that can help solve crimes that already happened. The inability for law enforcement to have access to encrypted information used the criminals’ poses “an extremely serious and unacceptable threat to the law-abiding members of society.” (Freeh) As with the iPhone case that was mentioned before, there is no concrete way of knowing if there is viable information on the device until it is opened and looked at. While the ability to have law enforcement to bypass encryption could possibly increase security, the risk to personal privacy is too

The Bill of Rights gives certain liberties to the people of the United States concerning privacy. While a government backdoor in the encryption can be an effective tool for certain agencies to gain access and knowledge of criminal activity, it can also be used to obtain information without a warrant. The Fourth Amendment gives the right to privacy and that a warrant explaining what law enforcement are to seize and the place being searched. The Patriot Act of 2001 “up new pathways for law enforcement to use emerging technologies in criminal cases without the suspects afforded their Fourth Amendment rights.” (Reitmayer) There should be many worries about this considering the recent leaks about the NSA collection activities. There are many ways of communications the average person use in modern times that are protected by encryption. Telephone calls, messaging services, and virtual private networks (VPN), among countless others, all use a type of encryption to ensure that people are not able to understand or read the data that is being transmitted if it is intercepted. The issue of privacy is not only the fear that the government will have access to all of a person’s information, it is partly also to the fact that a backdoor would never be government