For years, anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the situation and no ax to grind has been preaching the gospel that today’s on-line society needs strong, end-to-end encryption for the safe conduct of our electronic activities. At the same time, law enforcement has been invoking the specter of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse and screaming, “Think of the children” at us.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about how the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon had proved there’s no such thing as a secure backdoor. Now, in what can only be described as a delicious bit of irony, U.S. Law Enforcement officials have agreed. In the wake of the Salt Typhoon exploit, they are urging everyone, not just government officials and companies, to encrypt their messages and, if they can, their phone calls.
It would be easy to gloat but my feeling is one of relief rather that one-upmanship. The calls for a “safe” backdoor was never going to end in anything but tears. Everybody, probably even those calling for it, knew that. Now, the Chinese hacking group has given us a tremendous gift: the surety that attempts to bypass encryption will end only in disaster. In our current environment, it’s to the advantage of nation states—with their virtually unlimited resources—to intercept and spy on our communications. One way—probably the only way—to prevent that is strong end-to-end encryption. It appears that even law enforcement has stopped pretending otherwise.