WE NEED to talk about secrets. Offline, we use locked cabinets, vaults and doors to keep our affairs private and our money safe. Online, this process hinges on one technology: encryption. We use it every day when we check our email, access our bank account or shop online. It runs in the background, unnoticed.
But encryption is now in the spotlight. Should the maths that underpins it be banned in the name of foiling terrorist plans, or should we accept that there is some information our governments will never know?
Edward Snowden ignited this debate when he revealed the extent of the US government’s mass surveillance. Privacy advocates were outraged. Tech companies like Apple and Google responded by increasing the levels of encryption in their products. Western governments hit back, saying spy programmes are needed to keep us all safe.
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The potential threat of terrorism, plotted in secret using encryption, intensifies the debate. Prior to the November attacks in Paris, both the US and UK were planning new laws to strengthen their power against encryption. Now support for these laws has grown. The debate will come to a head in the next few months as politicians finalise the proposed legislation.
Cryptographers are also realising they can no longer stand silent. In a talk last month, , a computer scientist at the University of California, Davis, asked his colleagues to move beyond mathematical puzzle solving and consider the morality of their work: “Cryptography rearranges power. This makes [it] an inherently political tool.”
What are the possible outcomes? These sketches are fictional, but the future worlds they portray could easily become real. Which one do you want?
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet and we have to do something”
Donald Trump, US Republican presidential candidate
1. Ban encryption
High street booms as online shops stall
Lengthy queues at banks, since you can’t transfer money online any more. No more Amazon, but high street shops are crammed. Yet terrorist attacks continue unabated, while the underground cryptography trade booms.
Ordinary people were hit hardest when encryption was banned in 2016, as it is now illegal to conduct secure transactions online. Banking or shopping online without using encryption is like sticking cash to a postcard and sending it to Amazon by mail, so everyone stopped.
People had thought the interests of companies whose businesses rely on encryption would make this ban impossible; that encryption was just too profitable. Governments insisted a ban was the only way to stay safe.
But the mathematics of encryption cannot be legislated out of existence. Those willing to defy the law still buy and sell online using the unregulatable cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Some do so to maintain their pre-ban lifestyle, while others make a profit selling hacked data.
Meanwhile, illegal encryption software is continually being developed – encryption is an idea that isn’t going to go away. Terrorists barely notice the ban and continue to organise attacks as before.
2. Build back doors
Hackers crack weakened online services
If you send a letter, the government can steam it open and read the contents. If you make a phone call, the government can listen in. Why should online communication be any different?
This argument convinced UK politicians to vote the Investigatory Powers Bill into law in 2016. It required companies to “maintain permanent interception capabilities, including maintaining the ability to remove any encryption”. The US and other countries soon followed suit.
But we soon learned that the analogy was false, and efforts to give the government access to encrypted data have put us all in danger.
The laws forced companies to introduce weak points in their services that governments can use for access. It only took a few years for Anonymous to announce it had discovered one of these back doors and leak personal emails on a global scale, leading to mass panic.
No one is sure how many more hacking groups had been quietly accessing our data before the brash light of publicity from Anonymous forced a rethink. There are even suggestions that ISIS exploited back doors to gain intelligence on high-profile bombing targets.
3. Status quo
Big tech vs big brother
The row over encryption came to a head in 2016. Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to withdraw the iPhone from sale anywhere that banned secure communication or demanded back doors. The firm’s encrypted iMessage service was an essential part of the device, he said.
With the prospect of losing their iPhones, protesters massed at Apple stores in cities around the world to convince politicians to change their minds. One enterprising developer even whipped up an app to email David Cameron, Barack Obama and other world leaders a petition with just a single tap.
Governments realised they had crossed a line. Sure, the US National Security Agency could read our emails – but take away our iPhones? Unthinkable. So Cameron, Obama and the rest backed down, shelving their new laws. After all, it to carry out their massacre.
Rather than breaking encryption and hoovering up more data, the security services focused on finding leads on terrorists in the data they already had, to avoid missing clues in plain sight.
These days, no one is bothered about encryption. It operates in the background of some services, but people still send unencrypted emails, tweets and text messages.
4. Total encryption
All out encryption beats cybercrime
It all started with Ashley Madison. When the breach of the adulterous dating site in 2015 led to divorces and even suicides after profiles were leaked online, people began to wake up to the dangers of unencrypted data. But it was only after a string of further hacks in 2017, including on the UK’s centralised medical record service care.data, that the public started clamouring for protection.
Tech firms continued the encryption roll-out started as a result of the Snowden leaks, while cryptographers stepped up research on new and easier-to-use techniques to protect our data. At the same time, laws were brought in requiring that any unencrypted database be air-gapped – that is, removed from any kind of network – to significantly reduce the possibility of a hack.
The security services protested at first, saying these moves would harm their ability to protect us. But with cybercrime levels nose-diving, the FBI and other enforcement agencies found they had more resources to put into targeted, on-the-ground surveillance, enabling them to tail potential terrorists and foil a number of serious plots threatening the UK and US.
In our more secure world, an elderly Edward Snowden has been pardoned by the US for leaking state secrets, and allowed to return home.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Four futures of the net”
