Privacy is a right, not a “high risk” and “possibly criminal” activity
by Andrea O’Sullivan
Reason.com
The Department of Justice has been busy thinking about how to deal with cryptographic technologies. This past month, DOJ has issued two major statements on privacy-preserving tech, one of them an international rallying cry to build government backdoors into secure communications and the other a “clarification” of federal policy surrounding cryptocurrency applications. Unsurprisingly, both documents view privacy-preserving technologies as impediments to DOJ operations.
The encryption statement was mostly a reiteration of long-standing government issues with secure communications, this time wrapped in the packaging of saving children from criminals. Signatories from the Anglo governments (“Five Eyes”) plus India and Japan again asserted that “public safety [can] be protected without compromising privacy or cyber security.” This is obviously true in the abstract, but not when the “protection” in question is a government backdoor that necessarily compromises privacy and security. No new ground was broken here.