A Synthesis Essay On Encryption

922 Words2 Pages

As of recently, encryption has become a largely debated topic. Within the last few months, large corporations like Google and Apple have made their devices fully encrypted so that only the user can be the one to unlock the encryption. Encryption has come under scrutiny from the government because with encryption it makes it more difficult for the government to monitor terrorism and to solve crimes.
Encryption needs to go, it provides a safe haven for criminal activity that can be hidden from government agencies who can prevent these crimes from happening. Encryption can provide a major barrier in solving crimes because of the passwords that large corporations aren't able to retrieve. Large companies which include Apple and Google, have placed …show more content…

Source B argues that encryption prevents crimes from being solved, which includes a father of six who was shot dead and the killer is now on the run (Source B). The article describes that there were two smartphones, one phone running on Apple’s operating system, and one on google’s Operating system. These phones seem to hold the answer to the crimes, but they can not be unlocked because the phones have been encrypted so not even the companies can unlock them. By having these phones encrypted, this could lead to this crime not being able to be solved and six kids not knowing who killed their father. Encryption adds an extra, very difficult, step that hinders the government's ability to be able solve crimes quickly and efficiently. Without encryption, the police could have looked for evidence on the phones and possibly could have solved the crimes and put the man who did this away so that his family could have closure. Encryption not only not only hinders the solving of murders, it also hinders the …show more content…

Yes, you have your right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment, but if the government can do something to ensure your safety, then that needs to happen. A “full-key” encryption would grant more privacy then we would need, allowing more crime to happen because now the government can’t see as much as they used too. Terrorists are becoming more and more tech savvy and now using it more than ever to communicate across countries to commit acts of terror. Source B supports this claim by “In France, smartphone data was vital to the swift investigation of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in January.(Source B)” This source describes that if it wasn’t for the data on the smartphones, this case may not have been solved and people may never know who had committed this attack. If the smartphone was “full-key” encrypted, then the evidence on the phone may have never been retrievable to solve who had done this attack. By encrypting smartphones, terror groups including ISIS, could hide many of their activities so that when we find out about them, it would be too late for the governments to stop

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