You Can Not Have Freedom Without Security

I recently watched a 60 Minutes piece from Lesley Stahl where she discussed the terror attack in Paris with a French prosecutor. The prosecutor bemoaned ISIS using the popular app, "Telegram" which has the capacity to provide end to end encryption for messaging on the Internet. He used several of the same arguments law enforcement in the United Stated uses when discussing encryption, such as law enforcement is going dark, there needs to be a balance, terror communication is a black hole, etc. Pretty standard the sky is falling type of arguments.

As a former Special Agent from the pre popular encryption apps era, I was amazed at the amount of information law enforcement was able to access in this new digital world. People think very little before putting something online and it is often there for all to see for an indefinite time. The advent of computers and smart phones has given law enforcement far more information and investigative leads then ever could have been imagined even just 10 years ago. While encryption limits some of this overall it is still a huge net gain of visibility by law enforcement. After the Snowden leaks it should be surprising to no one that private citizens are increasingly concerned about their own privacy.

I served many search warrants in my law enforcement capacity. Something that most people do not think about is just how private the nature of photographs is. For instance, I have gone through dozens of people's houses during the execution of warrants and while it is certainly an invasion of privacy for the affected individual, it pales in comparison to going through someone's private pictures found on the same search warrant. I will never forget going through a man's house from top to bottom, including all of his and his wife's underwear drawers, with several other agents and not finding what we were looking for. However, we did come across a stash of private pictures he had of himself and his wife in many different sexual positions. Mind you these photos had nothing to do with the execution of the warrant. Yes, looking at someone's personal pictures on a search warrant where I was authorized to also go through their underwear drawers was the most I ever invaded someone's privacy. To make matters worse in this case, other agents left a particular picture they found of the man's wife engaging in fellatio with him on his table so the wife would know that we had looked at them. This was meant to embarrass her and to put her on notice that her privacy had been severely violated.

This always pissed me off. A lot of folks I worked with in law enforcement behaved in a manner such as this, very short on respect for many of the people they were investigating. Not all law enforcement officers were like this but there was no shortage of them either. When some want to pretend that law enforcement will act responsibly with the most sensitive private data belonging to someone I hope they will think of this story. Cops are people too and people do stupid shit. Encryption is a way to keep assholes out of your stuff. Think about the pictures, banking information, texts, email, etc you have on your own cell phone. It would be a phenomenal intrusion of your privacy should it be breached. I would argue, even a bigger invasion than merely serving a search warrant on a house because of the nature of the data being stored on phones nowadays. A cell phone and the data in it really gives someone a window into your innermost thoughts and beliefs.

People should want to keep this sensitive data protected. Encryption by its mathematical nature is binary. It is secure or it is not. A backdoor can not only be provided to law enforcement that does not seriously undermine the security of the device. There is no magic golden key or any other means to make your device secure from everyone except law enforcement. I didn't agree with all of Justice Antonin Scalia's legal decisions but there is something he got exactly right. In Arizona v. Hicks in 1987 he said,

"There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all." 

I can think of nothing more appropriate in this recent debate over encryption. Ironically, at the end of the Stahl segment in which she and the French prosecutor were clearly on the side of magically getting law enforcement more access to encrypted communication they closed with, "You Can Not Have Freedom Without Security". This was to suggest that police need to have access to our smart phones in order for us to live in a free and functioning society. What they missed is that those of us on my side of the argument would say the same thing. We can not enjoy the great things the Internet has to offer without security. The only way that security is currently possible is with strong encryption. Encryption either works or it doesn't. It is the classic Yoda, do or do not. You can not have freedom without security. Indeed.