The International Encryption Debate: Privacy Versus Big Brother

Turning the traditional concept of privacy on its head, governments appear to be positing that the totality of every individual's digital communications should be left open for scrutiny by government investigators in case some come to be suspected of wrongdoing at a later time. Not surprisingly, this Big-Brother-is-watching approach has met with resistance from public rights and civil liberty activists.

Before the technology explosion, two individuals desiring a private conversation might have opted for a phone call, secure in the expectation that the information shared during the call was not subject to eternal preservation. Indeed, such privacy generally is perceived as a human right. A detailed and extensive body of wiretap statutes and case law in the United States, arising from Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, insures that telephone conversations remain private absent evidence of probable cause that the subject individuals are actively involved in criminal mischief and issuance of a warrant by a court. The shift from oral conversation to digital communications should not change these fundamental privacy protections and assumptions.