With an advance in technology, the use of computers for encryption technology wasn’t just limited to the military and government. Increasingly, civilian businesses began using encryption and cryptography to encode their messages. In an attempt to standardize encryption across the United States, the National Bureau of Standards looked to Lucifer. This encryption system developed at IBM was so strong that it offered the possibility of cryptography that couldn’t be broken even by the NSA. The NSA didn’t want civilians to use encryptions that it couldn’t break, so the NSA successfully lobbied to weaken Lucifer by reducing the number of possible keys. The adoption of this weakened Lucifer meant that the civilian world had access to strong but not optimal security, meaning that the NSA could still break their encryptions if it needed to do.
The NSA was justified in pushing for the adoption of a mechanism that they could break even if it meant less security for the civilian world. Allowing civilians and businesses to gain strong encryption mechanisms that no one but them could decipher would have meant an increase in criminal activity that governments couldn’t even begin to monitor. This would have reduced the safety of the populace as a whole. When living in a society we often give up some rights for the greater good, and it should be noted that no right is absolute – my right to free speech doesn’t allow me to yell fire in a crowded theater for example. Thus by merely knowing that the NSA can still decrypt messages that businesses send can often be a deterrence to secretive or illegal activity.
Critics like to point out that giving the NSA the ability to decrypt any message they would like would be giving the government far too much power. But it should be noted that even while the NSA has the means to decipher an encryption, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will. There are billions of texts, emails, and calls exchanged each day in our world – the NSA has neither the means nor the resources to monitor every single message. Thus the NSA must prioritize by possible criminal activity: criminal activity they cannot detect and stop without the use of decryption. Thus, it is not only important but essential that the NSA be able to decrypt the messages of the business world in order to deter criminal activity and better protect our society.
