Encryption... It's a Big Deal

OK, so, I’m hearing about this enough from people that don’t understand it, that I want to take the time to explain it the best I can:

Encryption. It's a big deal.



It's been in the news a lot lately, and I recently posted a lengthy article about it, but I'm going to keep this short, with an analogy.

It's like this. One day, when houses were new, all the carpenters decided what was in the houses was important enough that they needed locks. So they built locks into all their houses. Those locks were broken into, so they learned to make better ones, and the government told the people,
"Yeah! These new locks are great! We'll call them 'magic locks', and everyone will be safe."
The carpenters, and all the people, were happy and felt safe. Even the government said the magic locks were safe!

Well, one day, a man from the government left the government and said, "There are no 'magic locks!' They're fake, and the government broke them all when the carpenters were making them, so we would feel safe, but any bad carpenters can get in, just so they can get into your house more easily when they have a warrant - but they make EVERYONE less safe, even from bad people!"

That's encryption, folks. And you should be very upset at what the government did, many, many times - and now that we know about it - are trying to make it legal and enforceable to have totally fake 'magic locks'. It's not just bad for the bad guys - you can't just break things for them by breaking the factory everyone gets locks from.

Major tech companies are totally against what the government is doing, and it's because they understand the long term consequences.

This is just a small part of the whole encryption/big brother crap going on right now, but it’s possibly the most important, and I haven’t heard any major news publications explain it correctly or accurately.

If this helped you understand something, or you think it will help others in your feed to… please share.


This article was moved from my other blog to here. Originally posted in 2015, it still holds relevance as the full impact of the Snowden revelations have not been yet realized, in my view.