Get Ready For The Political Fight Against Encryption

from the it's-coming dept

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Among our many commenters here, we have one "regular" critic who presents himself as being actively involved in "policy circles" in Washington DC, and who was clearly active in the SOPA/PIPA efforts in trying to write those bills and get them passed. This individual provided enough information (along with plenty of insults in our direction) in the comments to make it clear that they were heavily involved -- if at a low level -- in those efforts. As the debate over this bills wore on and people kept pointing out how encryption would make them all moot in the long run, the commenter declared a few times his (or her?) next target: outlawing encryption. This is, of course, laughable. But if someone who is actually connected to that world thinks that it's a viable idea, then you know that it's only a matter of time until someone actually makes a hamfisted attempt at doing something like trying to outlaw VPNs. That this would go against the very same governments' efforts on "internet freedom" is generally ignored. Cognitive dissonance is strong with this crowd.That said, with countries like the UK proposing legislation to snoop on all communications -- including encrypted ones -- the folks over at TorrentFreak are right to be wondering how long it will be until someone tries to ban VPNs . Some more authoritarian countries have tried to effectively do so already (without much luck), but as our anonymous commenter suggested above, this idea is at least being considered by plenty of so-called democracies as well.Thankfully, there would be plenty of powerful forces to fight back against any such attempt. Beyond regular internet users speaking out (ala the SOPA/ACTA protests), you'd also have plenty of companies who rely on encryption and VPNs for their efforts to keep people and data safe. Considering Congress is already suggesting that it should get involved in forcing companies to better protect data, it would be ironic (though, not surprising) to then find them also trying to outlaw encryption/VPNs, not realizing that the two things are diametrically opposed to one another.In the end, I don't see how a war against encryption or VPNs could actually succeed, but it won't mean that efforts in that direction won't be a painful annoyance when they come around. Either way, people should at least be paying attention to these discussions, and trying to educate politicians that encryption and VPNs are necessary parts of a secure internet.

Filed Under: acta, encryption, pipa, sopa, uk, vpn, washington