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Why Is The Government Backdoor Of Encryption

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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The Fourth Amendment makes people in American feel safe and secure. David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?” says,"a few years after it aired the director of national Intelligence admitted illegal surveillance was still taking place"(understand). " the Government’s unverified assertion that it has halted “systemic” illegal/unconstitutional surveillance by the National Security Administration." says David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?”(Understand). Sirota also states "The NSA is admitting that even with an outdated 1997 supreme court ruling it knows it cannot post mass collect metadata with no warrants whatsoever.

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According to the BBC, it has become known that the NSA was responsible in the massive surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans through the PRISM progra,, not just those who have suspected links to terrorism. Companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo routinely provided a back door for the NSA to tap into their servers and track online communications (Document 1). This article was released about two years after the leaks when the debates over the future of the PATRIOT Act started to intensify. The National Security Agency strong armed these firms into giving up clients’ private data. No one stood in their way because the NSA had the full backing of the blinded Congress.

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The Fourth Amendment, which states that without warrants or probable cause, no searches can be executed, is essentially nullified by the Patriot Act. For example, sneak and peek searches in which law enforcement agencies can search residences and offices of Americans and not inform them of the search until after it

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The fourth amendment makes it hard for Law enforcement conducting investigations to get information that could be very useful. The apple company gets thousands and thousands of information requests that they are legally not allowed to share,and a large portion of the requests are from people whose devices have been lost or stolen. Additionally, lots of times Apple says no to the information requests, and even once Apple is approved to give personal material they still share a minimal amount of data, however Apple does collect a minimal amount of data. The patriot act allows certain exceptions having to do with terrorists to be made when finding information, and they are very helpful to law enforcement, but only in terroristic situations. Furthermore the amount of information that the Patriot act allows investigators to get for terror crimes just shows how much information we could be getting about horrific criminals that are not yet in jail.

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The government has many tools in looking into people's information but the government doesn't realize that it is violating the 4th amendment by using the resources they have in looking into suspected people and that's the reason why we cannot trust our information to be safe with the government either way. David Cole, a lawyer who teaches constitutional law and national security at Georgetown University, and other legal analysts says that, “The world of computers has weakened the Fourth Amendment. " In the modern digital age, it means very, very little. "(citation). The reason why he says this is because, before we had computers, no one knew who we were seeing or where we were going throughout the day, but if someone were to know they would have to wiretap our things to know.

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For agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA), it is very difficult to keep trust between them and the American people since most of their work is classified. Moreover, the NSA must also collect large amounts of signal communications in order to be able to produce relevant intelligence products for their customers (Hayden, 2014).

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I believe that they are violating our freedom act and our individual privacy. If we have a computer that collects all information about us, how can we be sure that other terrorists will not be able to get a hold of our private information? Personally, it makes me feel less safe that everything I do digitally is stored somewhere. There are people

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Lucky for this the government laid off the terrorist thing, the government still can read your text and see your pictures, all of toughs app’s ya’ll have, the internet has them and so does the government. Our phones have codes on them so that the government can track you down right to the house that you sent that

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“The Patriot Act broadly undermines the rights of all Americans. It reduces judicial oversight of a host of investigative measures, including wiretaps, expands the government 's ability to track individuals ' Internet use and gives federal officials expansive new powers that are in no way limited to investigating terrorist crimes. ( thenation) It authorizes an end run around the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to conduct wiretaps and searches in criminal investigations, without probable cause of a crime, as long as the government claims that it also seeks to gather foreign intelligence--an authority that is particularly questionable in light of recent disclosures from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the FBI has

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Alexis Milonas Ms. Focarelli Research and Themes 21 March 2023 The Downfall of Government Surveillance in the United States Imagine a society full of conformity and no privacy, like the society in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The United States of America is quickly turning into that society more and more every day due to an immense amount of technological advances. The U.S. is one of the most governmentally surveilled countries in the world behind infamous China.

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“The NSA is not listening to Americans ' phone calls or monitoring their emails” (Does the Government). As the government states they are permitted to collect any Americans communications The Fourth Amendment protects your privacy, for instance the police cannot search personal properties. Due to the definition of "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,” it makes people feel secure (Legal Information). In addition, it prevents all irrelevant searches that are not useful.

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So when police and the FBI obtained the phone they tried to unlock it but couldn’t do to the security feature on the phone which erases all memory on the phone after the password is entered in wrong a certain number of times. So when they got close to this happening they, the FBI, asked Apple to try and create a software that they could upload into the iPhone that would unlock it so that they could see if there was any information on the phone as to why they attacked. So essentially they would create a “backdoor” which would allow law enforcement to unlock any iPhone that they wanted. Now to some this might sound like a good idea and something that Apple would be happy to do because it would help to solve why this tragedy occurred, but Apple refused and said that this would be

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1210 Words | 5 Pages

Advancements in technology over the years has been drastic. Focusing just in the security field of technology has changed in the last couple of years. Advancements in security today, can have its benefits of keeping people safe as well as detriments to people’s privacy as in Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” demonstrated. In the story “The Veldt”, technology played a huge role.

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Technology is amazing, everywhere you look, everything you need and use revolves around technology. However, what people don’t know is that the better the technology is getting, the easier it is for the government to track your every move. Everything we research, save and “delete” is sent to a “cloud” where anyone like the government can get to like nothing. Technology in present day society is closely parallel to Orwell’s vision in his novel 1984 for the reason that there is no privacy because of technology. Many writers have pointed out similarities between the modern world and the world of “1984” such as in the articles “That’s No Phone.

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He bravely exposed secretive government surveillance practices, shedding light on issues concerning privacy, transparency, national security, and global implications. His revelations sparked important conversations and calls for change, leading to better protection of privacy rights, increased transparency and accountability, smarter use of limited resources, and discussions about global surveillance standards. Despite ongoing debates about Snowden's actions, it is crucial to recognize the lasting positive impact he has had on shaping societal values and

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