We Don't Need Laws to Regulate Encryption Technology
"It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized" (1984, Orwell 6). Government shouldn't require in all encryption devices a trapdoor feature that would allow immediate decoding of any message by law-enforcement officials.
To begin, the trapdoor feature would be a major disadvantage to U.S. technological companies. The cost to produce technologies comparable to these of other countries would increase with compensation for the extra parts and labor. Consequently, consumers would be more likely to purchase the cheaper products from other countries. Time and money would have to be spent on developing products to meet strict regulations. Thus, less of the focus could be utilized to improve product design. Foreign countries might develop a predilection against U.S. technology that could immediately decode any message, because it would compromise the security of their codes and top-secret messages. In any case, the U.S. technology trade will suffer greatly by this proposal.
Next, this is a significant move toward a complete ban on products that offer unbreakable communications privacy. The most advanced and most secure encryption methods to date cannot easily be deciphered instantly without the exact key, but all U.S. encryption technology needs to comply with the proposed regulations. For this reason, the encryption methods would have to be simplified enough to work with the trapdoor feature. There could never again be any unbreakable code, since if it were unbreakable, it would be illegal. Everything could be instantaneously be decoded "for our public safety." You would never know when you were under surveillance, or if someone could be illegally accessing the trapdoor and monitoring you for information like a credit card number.
Finally, communications privacy would be a thing of the past. The proposed law would also require telephone companies and Internet providers that offer data-scrambling technology to have the electronic trapdoor feature. You would have to always assume that someone could be eavesdropping on all your electronic conversations through the electronic trapdoor. Regulated encryption is the first step toward making surveillance capability a legal requirement. If monitoring scrambled data becomes as easy as a wiretap, eventually other surveillance devices could be required just as easily to provide "for our public safety". "This is not the first step toward the surveillance society -- it is the surveillance society," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center of Democracy and Technology. The government maintains that access to scrambled data is needed for national security and law enforcement. Yet government officials dispute the idea that requiring decoding technology would necessarily mean the technology would be used. In other words, the government claims that the purpose of installing surveillance devices is to not use it.
In conclusion, the trapdoor feature proposed to be required in all encryption technology is not as good as the government would like us to believe. It would impede the U.S. company technology trade, virtually ban products that offer unbreakable encryption, and deracinate privacy in domestic and commercial communications. "My paranoid meter has swung all the way over," said George Spix, a Microsoft executive who focuses on encryption regulations. "This proposal frightens me. It's pretty extreme."
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