Following Tim Cook's lead, the advocacy group behind Apple, Google, Microsoft and plenty of other big tech firms has come out against calls to weaken encryption, which authorities argue would make it easier to track criminals. "Weakening encryption or creating backdoors to encrypted devices and data for use by the good guys would actually create vulnerabilities to be exploited by the bad guys," said Dean Garfield, the CEO of the Information Technology Industry Counsel (ITIC), who also represents Facebook, Twitter and AOL. It "would almost certainly cause serious physical and financial harm across our society and our economy," he added. The backlash against strong encryption is particularly heated today, following the recent Paris attacks. While secure communications are generally a good thing for consumers, governments (including the US and UK) have argued for backdoors that would allow them to intercept encrypted data. Naturally, that would make life easier for intelligence agencies, but it defeats the point of having encryption at all.
Via: The Guardian
Source: ITIC
Read the full article here by Engadget
No comments:
Post a Comment