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The Human Rights Risks of Encryption ‘Back Doors’

February 27, 2016

The Human Rights Risks of Encryption ‘Back Doors’ 

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One fact that has received little attention in the current encryption debate is that many categories of individuals rely on strong encryption for their own security. These include sexual and gender-based rights activists, domestic violence victims, journalists and their sources, and human rights defenders. Strong encryption is necessary to protect fundamental human rights; as one technologist puts it, encryption saves lives.

Encryption, a process of scrambling communications to make them private, is frequently discussed simply as a privacy issue. But the same process that keeps banks’ communications secure is also, for many, a safeguard of many human rights including the right to life. For those who rely on secure communications in sensitive situations, the issue goes far beyond privacy.

Experts agree that “secure back doors”—which would give law enforcement secret access to digital storage or communications—are scientifically impossible. That explains the uproar over a federal magistrate judge’s recent decision ordering Apple to create a backdoor to an iPhone. On Feb. 25, Apple moved to vacate that decision and warned that the FBI is seeking a “dangerous power” in the case.

Back doors are wholly unnecessary for security. Law enforcement agencies already use hacking tools to track electronic communications and circumvent encryption. Information-sharing programs reportedly exist with intelligence agencies, which use keyloggers to record encrypted messages before they are sent. National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers can even number-crunch to break some encoded messages. And encryption does not shield the “to” and “from” lines of messages—also known as metadata. The problem is not a lack of tools, but intelligence failures in analyzing existing information—perhaps one reason former NSA head Michael Hayden rejects the FBI’s position on back doors.

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