Question

Around the world, governments are introducing laws which either limit or prohibit the availability of cryptography for their citizens, require key escrow (c.f. the Clipper chip), or require telecommunications and Internet service providers and software developers to somehow break or weaken cryptography in their products, perhaps by introducing 'back doors' or other vulnerabilities (e.g. the Assistance and Access Act (Cwlth) 2018).

Take a position for or against government intervention in cryptography, for government, the business sector and private individuals. In each case, you should briefly describe and weigh up the positive benefits of cryptography as well as the threats it poses. Should governments have the power to prohibit or break encryption?

There are obvious implications for confidentiality and privacy, but what about the other security properties such as integrity, entity authenticity, integrity, anonymity, fairness, etc.?

What are the implications of any weakening of protocols or the introduction of back doors? Are there other, perhaps more important, threats to democracy and individual liberties in cyberspace?

Take into account:

• Changes in the cryptologic landscape over the next 25 years or so
• The geo-political threat landscape
• The ethical and moral objectives society expects of its members
• Other threats to individual liberty, the production of business, and the health of society

Answer 1

With the advent of the internet, more and more people are getting connected with each other over the internet, and due to this, the assets that are connected through the internet are becoming more and more vulnerable as the cyber capabilities of the hackers and crackers are increasing in the same proportion.

This is the reason why there is a sudden need for making these systems secure and safe so that data privacy and information security can be ensured to the internet users.

In order to secure these systems, many steps and improvements have been carried out and they basically include improvements in the existing technologies as well as the invention of newer and safer technologies. One such technology is encryption that allows the engineers to actually encode the messages in accordance with the mathematical rules and formulae so that this message can never be intercepted and if ever gets intercepted, it never would be decoded by the intruder.

Almost all kinds of organizations are using this technique to save and secure their communication channels.

Yes, there are political and social limitations to the implementation of even this kind of technology over the data and the communications, and is largely decided by the agenda of the ruling parties or the governments in the countries. There are times when the governments actually restrict the usage of encryption techniques just to meet their political goals and this would actually lead to the destruction as well as the losses to the internet users of that country.

It is also decided by the geo-politics of any region as if two neighboring countries are at war with each other then there would be cyber attacks too on each other's facility and in that case, it becomes absolutely necessary for the governments to use proper standards of internet security and that includes the latest and advanced encryption techniques as well. In upcoming times, as the internet and information technology would become more and more advanced, the cyber capabilities of the hackers and crackers would increase at a very fast pace too and due to this, the encryption techniques would become absolutely necessary for the people of almost each and every country of the world.

This is the reason why it is high time for the governments of all the countries to actually take the issue of information security and data privacy seriously and do whatever is needful.