Is encryption a fundamental right? No. I feel there is certainly no fundamental right to encryption in this county. If there not a fundamental right to health care, then I feel there certainly is not a fundamental right to encryption. However, I also do not feel the government has the right to demand that make our data vulnerable for the purpose of government investigation. The 4th amendment grants us the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and it is generally held that we are more protected from search and seizure as the reasonable expectation of privacy increases. In other words, what you do behind closed doors in your own home is more protected than what you do in the town square. As this relates to encryption, I feel that the more encryption we use and the more private our internet activities are, the less the government should be able to interfere. Furthermore, if it were ever possible to develop a technology that completely locks out the government, I feel that there would be no reason the government could undermine this.
Personally, I am much less concerned about government intervention with encryption than I am with criminal intervention. I know that the government is often much more tied up with criminals and suspected criminals than it is with my personal data. However, criminals and black hat hackers do not possess this sort of prejudice. Some criminals will seek to attack me at any possible opening, and I would prefer to defend against them in the strongest way I can. I think this is less of political issue than it is of a social one. We all want to be secure and retain our privacy and I ultimately do not think the government aims to undermine this. However, their criminal prosecutions cannot succeed at the cost of our everyday privacy.
I think if such a battle between personal privacy and national security were to ever really exist, national security would win the day. Despite this, I’m not sure these forces are at direct odds and I also have faith that the American people place tremendous value on privacy. This leads me to believe that if things ever really got out of hand, we would exercise of civic abilities and right the wrongs of the government.
timpusaterisite 