What are crypto wars?

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WASHINGTON (June 21, 2021) In June 2020, the Law on Legal Access to Encrypted Data was introduced, which could force companies to help governments by breaking their own encryption. This has led some to claim that the crypto wars are back. [1]. But in reality, the encryption debate has never really gone away in the United States.

In a new political study [2] by Kathryn Waldron, resident researcher and Sofia Lesmes, research assistant in the cybersecurity and emerging threats team at R Streets, explain how the encryption debate in the United States has been marked by a number of high-profile events since the start of the crypto war in the 1990s that shaped the debate over the limiting binary of privacy versus security.

The persistent nature of the encryption debate is in part due to a lack of a common language, the increased availability of encryption services, and the lack of a whole-of-government approach to cybersecurity.

The way forward for encryption is multifaceted and requires efforts on both sides of the debate. Policymakers should capitalize on the inauguration of a national cybersecurity director to streamline the encryption policy debate. Additionally, the creation of a Bureau of Cyber ​​Statistics would help paint a clearer picture of the number of investigations hushed up by encrypted communications, instead of allowing large-scale individual events to dominate the debate. Finally, stakeholders must change the language of debate, avoiding certain terms that are too confusing or too polarizing to have any value, and reframe the debate under the guise of security against security.

From the early crypto wars to similar debates today, the encryption debate has evolved slowly. This is due to factors such as a lack of consistent language, an unstable hand of government actors over the decades, and events that occur as a result of unresolved issues, say Waldron and Lesmes.

Endnotes “The Encryption Wars Are Back”: https://fortune.com/2020/06/29/encryption-backdoors-computer-security-congress-heres-whats-at-stake/ “new policy study” : https: // www.rstreet.org/2021/07/21/reframing-the-crypto-wars/

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