The short answer is, no.
The pro argument says law enforcement needs this tool to fight crime and terrorism, and we can build appropriate safeguards into any law to prevent abuse. The con arguments point out the danger in granting more power to the government, suggesting that safeguards have limited value.
I’ve read through the pros and cons and concluded it’s a bad idea to grant the government power to access encrypted communications. Nobody wants to give terrorists and other bad guys a free ride – but as many have pointed out elsewhere, bad guys will find their own ways to do encryption regardless of any US law. So if we pass a law essentially crippling encryption technology in the United States, we hurt the good guys and help the bad guys. Tell me how this makes any sense. We’re all better off with a level playing field.
With a law granting the government this power, even loaded with safeguards, what’s to stop corrupt individuals from abusing it? Attempted abuses of power are already easy to find. There was a case in Minnesota a few years ago when male law enforcement professionals looked up driver’s license records for a few female troopers, politicians, and news media celebrities. In another case, the IRS as an institution put up roadblocks to make it unnecessarily difficult for some nonprofit groups to gain tax exempt status because individuals in positions of authority apparently disapproved of these groups. So if we grant the government even more power, imagine the possibilities for abuse and tyranny on a massive scale. It would be 1984 in the 21st century.
Some have advocated an approach combining new technologies with court approval as a safeguard against such tyranny. The ideas essentially come down to inventing an electronic lock-box to hold everyone’s decryption keys. Law enforcement can access the lock-box only with appropriate court orders. The idea sounds nice, but it’s short-sighted and foolish. Does anyone seriously believe a determined group of bad guys would have any trouble coming up with an attack against such a lock box? Does anyone seriously want to trust our cryptographic keys with the same government that brought us healthcare.gov and sensational headlines around NSA break-ins?
But my opinion is not worth the disk space to store it. Don’t believe me? Just look at what happened to US cloud providers shortly after the Snowden revelations. Look at what happened to RSA’s credibility after the stories about RSA and the government being in cahoots started circulating. Now imagine what would happen to confidence in the entire United States data grid if such a law were to pass.
Why would anyone trust any service provider with anything important if the government can access all of it? My private information is mine, and I choose who sees it. Not the government. And I promise you, if I have information I care enough about to keep private, I’ll find a way to safeguard it regardless of any law.
Carrie Cordero and Marc Zwillinger recently wrote a point/counterpoint article on this topic in the Wall Street Journal, here. In case that link breaks in the future, I saved a PDF here.
There are other ways to fight back against the bad guys besides granting tyrannical power to the government. I wrote an education book about IT security, disguised as an international fiction thriller titled, “Bullseye Breach.” Take a look at the website, right here.