Project 03: Response

Here is a link to our letter: letter.

I do not believe that encryption is necessarily a fundamental right. Privacy, however, is a fundamental human right. We should not have to share our home or family photo albums with every person that wants to walk into our houses and look around. That is why have locks and keys for our doors. So that only the people we trust can get into them. This analogy can be used to understand encryption. We have sensitive information on our phones. It could possibly be just as dangerous to allow someone access to your phone than your home since you also could have your online passwords and credit card information on there. This is why we need encryption. It protects our fundamental right of privacy in the virtual realm.

As I said above, however, I do not believe that encryption is a fundamental right. If someone such as the San Bernardino shooter deserves this right. He broke the law and was caught, and therefore should be investigated. Just like in any other investigation, his privacy is then forfeited in exchange for the protection of the masses. So we should be able to break the encryption and get into his phone then, right? Not exactly. The reason that we want to break into his phone is that we believe that the information there would protect US citizens, but as we discussed in our letter, creating a program that can break this encryption would actually be putting people into greater danger. Thus, US citizens must be allowed this technology to keep them safe, not because the government should not be allowed to investigate the information that we want kept secret, but because allowing the government the access to investigate us (which I do thing would be a good thing) would also put the millions of innocent law-abiding citizens at risk.

This issue is as personally important to me as it should be to anyone. Encryption protects us from attacks on our financial and personal identity and it absolutely does influence who I support politically and financially. On the political front, I feel that anyone who does not understand why encryption is so important is not seeing the totality of the issue. And if they fail to see the whole picture on something like this, I do not think that I could trust them to see the bigger picture in other much more complicated issues. So I would be inclined to not vote for somebody who thinks that Apple should have granted the FBI’s wish. And financially I want to buy products that I know will protect my information. I do not think that I would like a person any less for disagreeing with me on this though, so I don’t think it would affect me on the social front.

If people believe that unlocking the phone is in the better interest of national security, then I would say that these people still don’t understand the issue at hand. As I said above, encryption is protected the masses. Apple just unveiled that over one billion of their devices are in use around the world today. Apple devices are everywhere, and a large portion of them contain sensitive personal information such as credit card credentials, names, birthdays, relationships, passwords, and the list goes on. In short, there is a good reason that people lock their phones behind pass codes. If Apple were to unlock that iPhone, then the security of all of our iPhones will be weakened. With all of these Apple devices out there, this is a very large security breach and could very well effect the security of American citizens on a national scale (as well as affect people around the world). This seems to me to be the bigger threat than unlocking an iPhone to investigate as single case. Especially since the evidence could only be used in this isolated incident, while the effects of the decryption could be detrimental forever. That form of encryption used by Apple would forever be weakened. So personal privacy is in the best interest of national security and should be fought for by everybody.