Why Outlawing Encryption Is Wrong

In a chilling move toward an all-knowing police state, FBI Director James Comey is making the news rounds to equate data encryption with letting child pornographers, kidnappers, and terrorists roam unchecked. The assertion: Law enforcement will have no tools to catch bad guys if encryption works as designed. So all of a sudden other advances in law enforcement technology are trumped? Let's get real.

I'm not a law enforcement officer, but I've been serving military and law enforcement technology needs for 20-plus years. I have an "outsider on the inside" point of view. And let me preface my arguments by saying that I'm a huge fan of law enforcement officials having the lawful tools they need to do their jobs. I'm grateful every day when they protect our community and country.

[Another retailer gets hit. Read Several Staples Stores Suffer Data Breach.]

But balance is needed in what is a serious matter of public concern. Law enforcement officials always want maximum, broad powers. And who can blame them? New IT system administrators always want maximum, broad powers. But our country works best when there's a balance of power, among the law enforcement and judicial system; legislators; and local, state, and federal executive leaders.

Outlawing data encryption that the government can't decrypt is wrong for many reasons. Here are a few.

The human element
I'm preaching to the choir when I say this to InformationWeek readers, but if law enforcement has key escrow, or a "master key" to all data encryption, that assumes there's a sound mechanism for ensuring that those keys don't fall into the hands of the bad guys, and that the good guys never use them for the wrong reasons. Those assumptions are laughable.

Bruce Schneier is an authority on why security back doors are a terrible idea: The bad guys inevitably find them and use them. Believe him.

Also know that law enforcement officers are a population like all populations, with good and bad eggs. If you think that no officer, anywhere, will use a back door to find out things that he or she shouldn't find out, think again.

Officers and other employees charged with keeping us safe can misbehave like any other company employee. I assure you that small indiscretions happen every day that the general public never knows about. Only when things blow up do we see the headlines, like the ones made by former FBI agent and turncoat Robert Hanssen, who was at one time an internal affairs investigator and who became known as a "computer expert" in the bureau.

Putting data encryption solely into the hands of government employees won't prevent bad things from happening.

Competitive disadvantage
Arbitrary spying creates a competitive disadvantage for our country. The NSA's spying on US citizens and businesses without due process created an atmosphere in which some foreign businesses are now reluctant to locate in this country. Indeed, analysts predict that US tech companies could lose $180 billion by 2016 due to international concerns about intelligence agencies' spying.

For the US to restore confidence, legislation must protect -- not remove --

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