In my opinion, the best argument for making strong encryption available to the general public is the necessity of privacy for the individual and businesses. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental human right. An idea that was highlighted in Little Brother was having privacy is liberating and everyone needs privacy. This idea is also applicable to the pro-encryption argument. Just as no one wants to defecate in a glass washroom in Times Square, people do not want their private matters to be made public, even if those matters are not criminal. Asies from the need for personal privacy, businesses also need privacy. Without strong encryption, e-commerce would be dead. People would not use their emails or social media sites as often to send messages. People would be more hesitant to use the internet knowing their every move was being monitored. Companies would have no way of protecting their customers’ information and their private records. As such, many large companies such as Amazon and Facebook would not exist without strong encryption. Withholding strong encryption from the masses is equivalent to holding society back from expanding technologically and economically. As the population grows, it is not wise to hold back economic growth or the average standard of life would decline.
A second strong argument for pro-encryption is the adaptability of policy. As Singh mentions, it is possible to reverse policy and create new policy that best suits the social, economic and political environment. A analogy to this, is when it is cold, we put on a coat. When it gets hot, we take off our coat. Like a coat, policy concerning encryption is not permanent. It is more logical to adopt policy that is suitable to the environment than to think one policy should govern for the rest of time.
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