David McManus reveals the limitations on government snooping

One of the greatest challenges for governments in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, ultimately even greater than being found out for routinely monitoring everything we all do and say online, is a new found sense of urgency that we all have to keep our data private as a result of all the snooping.

Strong computer encryption offers us a chance to do just that. Think of it as a lock that is impossible to pick where you hold the key that is impossible to duplicate.

As a direct response to Snowden, companies are securing the data in their hardware and software in such a way that even they do not have the technical capability to decrypt it regardless of any legal order to do so.

To a state that has had revealed its intent to spy on our communications, this is a problem and it causes the authorities to issue hyperbolic statements as a result.

When Apple implemented strong encryption by default in late 2014, a senior US police officer warned that the iPhone would become the “phone of choice for the paedophile” as a result. Governments want the ability to access our data, even if only when deemed necessary, but the issue here is that you cannot have something that is two things at once. Secure data that has a special back door for law enforcement is a contradiction in terms. Protecting communications means they are protected from everybody. If you make them accessible to one group then you make them potentially accessible to all.

Apparently accepting this, David Cameron has repeated his desire and intention to ban strong encryption altogether. He has told Parliament that he wants to “ensure that terrorists do not have a safe space in which to communicate”. Aside from whether or not we would want it, is this a feasible aspiration and what would need to be done?

As Bruce Schneier, an expert in cryptography and security and fellow at Harvard Law School points out, it gets draconian pretty quickly.

The Government could ban UK companies from providing software but would have no control over what is offered outside these isles so would need to enforce internet censorship of everything we download.

Operating systems would need to ban the installation of free software and anyone entering the UK would have to have their computers and phones analysed for encryption software, having them confiscated if they contain it. The result of all of this, apart from turning the country into an authoritarian state, would be that private organisations and citizens would lose the ability to keep their information secure and the bad guys, being bad guys, would effortlessly work around it. Oh – and it is completely impossible to implement.

As a society we actually need strong encryption beyond the level of government if we are to remain secure from potential terrorism. Successive governments have shown a startling misunderstanding and ignorance of technology and Cameron cannot hope to do what he is suggesting, regardless of motive. We can only hope that deep down he actually knows it.