The New Crypto Wars: Return of the Coney

I was more than overjoyed to hear that the FBI has officially been told by United States Congressional member Darrell Issa that FBI Director Coney's propositions about forcing companies to decrypt phones has a "zero percent" chance of passing.

I have talked about this issue before, but I thought I would rehash the topic and give a little further insight into the matter for the people who don't quite understand what's so important about it.

If you weren't aware, FBI Director James Coney was infuriated by iPhone and Google's new default encryption services and says they have gone "too far". He publicly stated that Apple was putting privacy over the law.

He stated that criminals used encryption to throw off investigations and that law enforcement is "struggling to keep up" with criminals who use technology.

But we already won this battle, Coney. He knows it, and odds are if you were born before then, you remember the Crypto Wars of the 1990's.

We, the people, won in the courts, in Congress, and in public approval.

You see, the fact is that the FBI believes they should be able to access anything and everything to push progress. They do not even minorly care if that means you have to sacrifice your rights as a citizen.

See the problem? It is a big one.

Coney has gone on a massive campaign against encryption to try and sway the public in his favor, but it isn't working for him.

He told companies if they didn't fix this issue, Congress would have to force them to stop using encryption.

This is where Congressman Issa comes into the picture. On October 17th, the California Republican released a string of tweets including quotes such as these;

"Americans have watched their government mislead the public about data collection and resist necessary oversight." 

"To FBI Director Comey and the Admin on criticisms of legitimate businesses using encryption: you reap what you sow."

" The FBI and Justice Department must be more accountable-- tough sell for them to now ask the American people for more surveillance power."

I'm happy to know there are still some sane proposals out of Congressional members.

We have to demand our rights as a people, and never let the people ruling us tell us what our rights are. That is not freedom, that is dictatorship.

So I'd like Director Coney to know, we don't encrypt because we're all committing crimes. We demand privacy because we're allowed to demand our privacy.

The American people won the Crypto Wars once and we can win them again, and if we don't the first time we will keep going after you until we do. That's what we do as Americans. 

You can say that it helps spread crime (which, for the record, is the same logic that criminals will follow gun-control laws) but it is not worth sacrificing the rights of the people for you to catch a small amount  of the never-ending criminal population.

As Americans we cannot bend to the will of authorities every time they say it will help protect us, because that is not what this country was founded on. We as a country accepted over 200 years ago that we must sacrifice some of our safety for justice and freedom.

If we don't are we truly any better than any other country in the world? I wouldn't say so.

That's all for today! I'll be back tomorrow with another post.

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -George Orwell