Cryptography is not the answer to surveillance. It has its place but that place is not to keep everyone's data secret _and_ irretrievable as plaintext except by its holder (never mind owner), if they retain the key.

The answer will be legal and political.

I cannot see the endgame where all data is forever gone, with the exception where people proactively plaintext their data for future generations.

Let's say instead of iPhone contacts or chat conversations we begin keeping tax records, transactions, commerce, etc. secret, except for the person or entity encrypting the data (who may or may not be the owner). What if the heirs need that data or third parties, lawfully? What about discovery in court cases? What if someone comes up with malware which encrypts your data and you have no backup?

How do we reconcile wanting data to be available (free) with also wanting everything encrypted for posteriority --do we just forgo that treasure trove of data?

I'm not saying don't encrypt on transmission, or even at rest, simply (or complicatedly) that we have a way to data once it's lawfully determined it can be should be made available to second and third parties, including the public.

Law states that banks have to give a notice to heirs when the original owner dies.

"What about discovery in court cases? What if someone comes up with malware which encrypts your data and you have no backup?"

Then you lose all your data. How is that a problem? You ask the bank-government for new credentials. And you learn to make copies for the next time. Not the end of the world.

It's not really that different from loosing your keys, maybe you will have to destroy your old lock and buy a new one.

Similarly, most records of importance to my heirs or a court case aren't solely held by me. Purchases are recorded by at least myself and the vendor, potentially with an intermediary like my CC or bank.

My tax records are retained by both myself and the IRS. In the case of a gov't case against me, they have those records. In the case of heirs needing access, they can petition the government if I failed to provide other access for some reason.

The malware example, this already happens. It can happen with or without cryptography being legal or pervasive.

> How do we reconcile wanting data to be available (free) with also wanting everything encrypted for posteriority --do we just forgo that treasure trove of data?

Who wants everything encrypted? I cannot think of a single person that's not at a very extreme ideological position that would argue for that.

Fine, you show me a way we can do that that does not necessarily entail that the "bad guys" (which explicitly includes law enforcement, unless and until its aims shift from "winning cases" to the actual pursuit of, you know, "justice") can access it, too, and maybe we can meaningfully have that discussion.

But, as long as my choices are "keeping everyone out" or "risking the bad guys getting in," I don't see much difficulty in picking my camp.

It basically amounts to the same "respect" we observe when we don't break through people's windows (even though it's trivial) or how "super users" don't [typically] abuse personal data at companies, etc.

In the case of tax records (and ignoring that government would have a copy of said records), consider a dispute with the government who claims that a deceased person didn't pay taxes while the heirs claim taxes were paid (obviously a contrived example). If the "proof" is unavailable because the deceased encrypted it, then the result is the same as if the encrypted data never existed. The heirs could say that any random noise is encrypted data that provides proof of payment, but without any way to decrypt (and, arguably, to authenticate it) that random noise into actionable data, any claims the encrypted data contains the necessary "proof" is meaningless.

In other words, it's not the fault of encryption that the heirs have to deal with this beef from the government, but rather the fault of the deceased who encrypted things valuable to the heirs without a way for the heirs to access it (via sharing a key or explicit, chosen key escrow with a third party, etc). We like to say the answer will be legal and political, and it definitely has legal and political influences and impact, but given that the encryption is unbreakable, or the value of the dispute isn't worth the effort to undertake breaking it, we won't be able to legislate math to, uh, "not work".

Even if the government is the trusted entity of last resort and maintains a "legal" way to access encrypted content, there's nothing stopping the deceased in the above contrived example to have encrypted it using an unsanctioned algorithm or not have shared the key with the government, or whathaveyou. Then they die. Not only is the data inaccessible, but the responsible party is dead, and unable to have legal retribution rendered unto them for breaking the law. In this respect, the data is just as good as not having ever existed (which may very well have been the reason the now deceased encrypted it in the first place).

As personal computing continues the migration towards mobile devices and away from PCs, most people's personal data will be on systems where there is no way to get around a lost key. I'm actually interested to see how Apple plans to manage the accidental lockouts and data destruction when all of a person's information is on their mobile computing devices.

There won't be any "oh, let me take it to the Genius Bar" solution.

If you want data available for posterity or for your heirs, you should be able to make it so. Why compel me to do the same if I don't want those things?

So this is no different than data that goes to people's graves that isn't encrypted. People never made good contingency plans, they don't make good contingency plans, and they will continue to not make good contingency plans. The availability of encryption doesn't change that.

Grandma had you videos and pictures on her mobile computing device, we have no way to get them back....

"Think of the grandmas!"

The last time this fight occurred... the last two times this fight occurred, actually, no one in the public had any clue what we were all talking about.

Unfortunately, most of them still don't.

You're right that "everyone has a device in their hands that they can touch, and know is related to this" but most of them still don't understand the significance of it -- if they are even aware of it at all!

My girlfriend is, I think, fairly representative of the "younger generation", for example. She's 21, not really that "techy" (despite having an iPad and iPhone), and is constantly using Facebook, Snapchat, and probably a handful of other apps that I've never even heard of. The first she became aware of any of this was after Tim Cook's "A Message to Our Customers". That evening, she was sitting on the couch on her phone and asked me, "Did you see this message thing from Apple?" My initial response was, "How did you hear about it?". "It's all over Facebook."

She knows, now, that it's an important issue to me. I've explained it to her as much as she cared to listen and she's seen and asked about the multitude of EFF stickers on my laptops (after seeing someone on TV with some of the same stickers).

She doesn't really care that much, though, and, as far as I know, pretty much none of her friends (all within a couple years of her age) do either. As long as they get what they want, they're content.

It doesn't affect them directly and so it gets none of their attention. Most of them have other, more important (to them) things that do affect them directly and, because of that, are much more relevant to their daily lives.

Black people are literally shot dead, on camera, for no reason by the police and no-one gives a shit. People (mostly, but not exclusively, black ones) have their lives effectively ended by drug policy - policy that's only now being tweaked around the edges with limited leniency towards users of 1 specific drug. You seriously think there'll be any meaningful, effective outcry when encryption is banned?

Suck it up; it's coming. I reckon a)4 years, b) the next big terrorist attack to hit a major western country or c) any attack to hit any country where encryption provides any protection at all to the alleged attackers, whichever comes first.

I'll continue using open source software(developed out of the US if necessary) that uses proper encryption with no known backdoors and hope that is good enough.

Eh. Only if you look at the past 15 years perhaps. But I think over the past 60 years it's been quite the opposite. We fought for civil liberties until we won, for the most part.

The other important point is that since the 90s, the snoops have been getting steadily better in spite of crypto becoming more widely used. Or at least that's true of the NSA; in the Apple case, it seems to me that the FBI is saying that they suck at tradecraft. Whether or not that's true is a different question.

It'd be unpopular for some (imagine if a more liberal party actually shut down the NSA or GCHQ, and then open sourced everything), but it'd certainly make an impact.