You have the right to remain encrypted

You have the right to remain silent. Weve heard the Miranda warning countless times on TV, but what good is the right to remain silent if our own cellphones testify against us? Imagine every incriminating and embarrassing secret our devices hold in the hands of prosecutors, simply because youve been accused of a minor crime. This is the brave new world that Attorney General Bill Barr advocated when he recently addressed the International Conference on Cyber Security and called for an end to encryption as we know it.

Encryption is indispensable to modern privacy. Without it, every message might be read by a third party, and every phone and laptop easily copied by an intruder. Encryption is the digital lock which gives us the security to trust our financial data and inner-most thoughts to the cloud, and without which everything, and I mean everything, in our digital lives might be exposed. Without strong encryption, police officers can potentially transform our cellphones and computers into a de facto government tracking device.

Its odd hearing this call for surveillance coming from Barr of all people. As general counsel at Verizon, he preached about the freedom to innovate, opposing net neutrality rules that would block internet service providers from shaking down websites and apps to get faster speeds and better access to potential users. What could more stifle the innovation of every single American than the knowledge that anything we say or do on our devices can be monitored at the request of the police? Read the rest