Curbing government Internet surveillance

GOVERNMENT efforts to access private communications are nothing new. In decades past, such attempts at prying were often justified on national-security grounds. Today, however, policymakers point to child safety and disinformation as reasons to limit privacy protections. Established democracies are often leading this charge, inadvertently paving the way for the world’s autocrats.

But people around the world are not taking these policies lying down. They speak out, using events such as Global Encryption Day to highlight the importance of privacy and security not just for their own lives but for their communities and societies. And as vociferous opposition continues to stymie government efforts to expand surveillance powers, it has become clear that public pressure works.

Encryption, which scrambles digital data so that it can be read only by someone with the means to decode it, has become ubiquitous because it keeps information confidential and secure while authenticating the identity of the person with whom one is communicating. Today, billions of people use encryption to send digital messages and e-mails, transfer money, load websites, and protect their data. The gold standard in security is “end-to-end” encryption (E2EE), as only the participants have access to the data – not even the service provider can decipher it.