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Fodder for a discussion of the pros and cons of unrestricted access to cryptographic technology

Views: 833
Kernel: Python 3 (Anaconda 5)

Cryptography & Society

Should people be allowed to have access to strong cryptography?

The genie is out of the bottle now, but there were strong efforts in the 1990's to make it difficult for ordinary people to have access to cryptographic technology.

There are many societal tradeoffs involved in the universal availability of crypto.

Considerations

  • National security: communications involving spycraft, foreign military operations, terrorism, etc.

  • Secret banking: tax avoidance, money laundering for criminals, terrorist financing, sanctions avoidance.

  • Extortion: Cryptography enables ransom payments, blackmail, etc.

  • Dark markets: Cryptography enables online anonymous markets and payments (opiods, oxy, krokodil, synthetic pot, murder for hire, etc.)

  • Dark money: foreign powers can secretly fund politicians, lobbyists, news messaging, social media campaigns.

  • Seizure of Evidence: Securely encrypted phones and computers hold crucial court evidence.

On the other hand...

  • Cryptography is necessary for online business: credit cards, banking, etc.

  • Cryptography is necessary for people to send private data: medical records, tax data, personal messages, whisleblowers

  • Cryptography enables resistance to repressive regimes (Arab Spring, Great Firewall)

  • Anonymous pamphleteering a big part of "healthy" political revolutions (Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, Madison, etc.)

  • Decentralized currencies such as bitcoin have some positive applications: remittances, banking the unbanked, allowing people to be their own banks, avoiding currency devaluation in totalitarian regimes, international money transfer.

  • A lack of privacy allows for data brokering, targeted ads, nefarious applications of machine learning.