In the wake of this week’s tragedies, I am deeply unhappy to see the media embracing a narrative that blames encryption for terrorism. Encryption protects people everywhere, including you, every day. It’s what ensures that your private communications, your personal information, your location and activities, and your identity are protected from stalkers, identity thieves, corporations, and governments. Encryption is what allows you to communicate over various secure channels (including iMessage, among others) without the fear that someone is eavesdropping.

Certain departments in the U.S. government have been trying for a long time to convince the public that encryption is a threat. They want to force companies providing encrypted services to weaken that encryption and increase the government’s ability to conduct surveillance on the public. The increased attention on encryption after this latest round of terrorism is both an opportunistic attempt to promote this surveillance-happy agenda and a tactic to distract from the failures of surveillance agencies and the deeper responsibilities for the rise of ISIS.

A world without encryption or with encryption that is deliberately hamstrung (by security “backdoors”) is a world in which the “bad guys” eventually have access to your private personal data, with all the dangers that entails.

Further Reading

• Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS, Glenn Greenwald

  For most major terror attacks, the perpetrators were either known to Western security agencies or they had ample reason to watch them. All three perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre “were known to French authorities,” as was the thwarted train attacker in July and at least one of the Paris attackers. These agencies receive billions and billions of dollars every year and radical powers, all in the name of surveilling Bad People and stopping attacks.

  So when they fail in their ostensible duty, and people die because of that failure, it’s a natural instinct to blame others: Don’t look to us; it’s Snowden’s fault, or the fault of Apple, or the fault of journalists, or the fault of encryption designers, or anyone’s fault other than ours.

• Top Intel Lawyer Says Terror Attack Would Help Push for Anti-Encryption Legislation, Dan Froomkin, Jenna McLaughlin

  The intelligence community’s top lawyer, Robert S. Litt, told colleagues in an August email obtained by the Washington Post that Congressional support for anti-encryption legislation “could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.”

  So he advised “keeping our options open for such a situation.”

• Surveillance Self-Defence, The Electronic Frontier Foundation

  Modern technology has given those in power new abilities to eavesdrop and collect data on innocent people. Surveillance Self-Defense is EFF’s guide to defending yourself and your friends from surveillance by using secure technology and developing careful practices.