Encryption is safe for now but for how long?
Europe and Australia’s quest to figure out a way around the end-to-end encryption took a momentary pause this week.
The fight for privacy is well & truly on and the big tech are not the allies here.
Why Am I Talking About Privacy & Encryption?
Social Media connected us all to bring our creativity to the fore. We are obliged to share and create content to express not just our personality but our personal lives too.
Fast forward a decade and we have AI trained on a data set seemingly not our data but a training set huge enough to predict our answers and create art just like humans.
I will leave it to you to connect the dots.
Now the discussions are centered around breaking or circumventing the encryption protecting our private chats.
I wonder if this is a sign of things to come in our future.
Remembering that all these decisions are in our best interests and for our security.
Online Security & Safety with or without End-To-End Encryption
If you want to know about E2EE here is a wonderful detailed yet simple article on it.
What Is End-to-End Encryption? (Definition, Examples) | Built In
The broad concern around having everything encrypted is the rampant increase in online criminal activity and terrorism and the need to curb it in transit.
The solution, by many, has been cited to break the encryption for a broader attempt at surveillance.
In the USA, it went as far as the NSA working with Apple to create a backdoor in iPhones which was overruled due to backlash from privacy advocates.
The question here is about the possibility of online safety and encryption working on the same page.
What’s the brilliant idea Europe & Australia were suggesting here?
The recent noise around the breaking of encryption is around Europe proposing to scan outgoing messages in the form of photos and links while Australia proposed something similar to scan messages on cloud and messaging services.
To get the whole idea, here is an article-
Europe and Australia both back down on CSAM scanning that would break encryption
Why is privacy and encryption talk so important?
In a traditional sense, I always hold the argument that I have nothing to hide when it comes to my digital footprints.
But privacy is not about whether there is something to hide or not, it is about the fundamental right to have a choice regarding sharing of personal information.
Encryption allows the users to exercise that right.
Imagine in this age of AI where our jobs are deemed necessary and unnecessary by a handful of companies that built AI on the backs of the data created and provided by us, what will happen if there is open surveillance on every bit of communication of the general public?
We might head into an Orwellian future.
What happens in the world with no encryption?
An Orwellian future is a surveillance first world where the Big Boss overlooks at everything we do, with no sense of privacy for the citizens.
What is Orwellian future? Here is a snippet -
A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
Today we have social media influencers voluntarily sharing every aspect of their life, it might just become a norm.
Loss of Encryption means loss of Individuality.
Surely, there is something we can do right?
What can we do?
In short, follow the privacy experts and be aware. Be mindful of the information that is shared with the general public.
In this context, the reason why breaking the encryption discussions leads nowhere is due to few privacy experts standing up for one and all.
Here is a great detailed article to get us up-to-date -
The power of AI and the intentions of those with this power can be very well deduced if we pay attention to these discussions that are disguised as the greater good.