<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/16/the-end-of-roe-will-bring-about-a-sea-change-in-the-encryption-debate/>
"With the Supreme Court poised to rip away a constitutional right that’s been
the law of the land for nearly half a century by overturning
Roe v. Wade,
it’s time for the gloves to come off in the encryption debate. For a quarter of
a century, it has been an unspoken prerequisite for “serious” discussion that
American laws and law enforcement must be given a default presumption of
legitimacy, respect, and deference. That was always bullshit, the end of
Roe
confirms it, and I’m not playing that game anymore.
Weirdly, there are a lot of similarities between encryption and abortion.
Encryption is a standard cybersecurity measure, just like abortion is a
standard medical procedure. Encryption is just one component of a comprehensive
data privacy and security program, just like abortion is just one component of
reproductive health care. They both save lives. They both support human
dignity. They’re both deeply bound up with the right to autonomy privacy, no
matter what a hard-right Supreme Court says. (Ironically, the way things are
going, the Supreme Court’s position will soon be that we have more privacy
rights in our phones than in our own bodies.) And finally, both encryption and
abortion keep being framed as something “controversial” rather than something
that you and I have every damn right to – something that should be ubiquitously
available without encumbrance.
It would be nice if both of these things were settled questions, but as we’ve
seen in both cases, the opponents of each will never let them be. The opponents
of bodily autonomy are about to score a victory they’ve been working towards
for decades. The immediate result will be total bans and criminalization of
abortion in large swaths of the United States. We absolutely cannot afford for
the opponents of encryption to prevail as well, whether in the U.S., the EU,
its member states, or anywhere else."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
