In a new white paper, Consumers Union (publishers of Consumer Reports)
looks at the “consumer stake in the encryption debate”: they note that
governments want to ban working cryptography so that cops can spy on
crooks, but the reprt does an excellent job enumerating all the
applications for crypto beyond mere person to person communications
privacy.
Crypto, after all, is the way that manufacturers authenticate their
software updates for devices, secure the transmissions between those
devices, and protect the integrity of sensitive information like
financial transactions, vehicle telemetry, and health data.
Posing the crypto wars as finding a balance between your right to
privacy and cops’ ability to fight crime misses out on these important
equities. Asking us to give up working crypto is also asking us to give
up the certainty that our medical implants, cars and voting machines
aren’t being remotely sabotaged.
