Council on Foreign Relations: There’s A Cop In My Pocket: Policymakers Need to Stop Advocating Surveillance by Default.
August 28, 2023
Encryption is like a baby: It comes with problems, but you wouldn’t solve them with blunt force. There is no safe form of “end-to-half” encryption, no backdoor that serves government authorities without also serving criminals. Yet under the banner of foreign relations, lawmakers continue to advance policies that normalize surveillance by default. These measures turn personal devices into monitoring tools, weakening security for everyone while claiming to strengthen it. Once encryption is compromised, hackers and hostile states gain the same access as police. The result is a quiet dismantling of privacy, civil liberties, and the open internet itself.
