Bring up the strength of encryption, the number of applications using it by default and the volume of encrypted traffic, and the benefits are universal: to democracy, commerce, privacy, human rights and even cyber security. On one side of the renewed rift are those who argue that more cryptography can only be beneficial. 3 The Crypto Wars of the early 1990s, it became clear, had never ended the fight simply entered the next round, with stakes raised and gloves off. 2 Cryptographers were shocked, and trust in the US government evaporated.

1 Even worse, just before Christmas that year, Reuters reported that the NSA had worked with the pioneering security company RSA to undermine the standard for a random-number generator, an engine that powers encryption. When the Washington Post showed the drawing to two engineers close to Google, they ‘exploded in profanity’. On a now-famous yellow Post-it note, one NSA spy outlined how to trick Google at the spot where the public internet meets Google's cloud, cheekily drawing a smiley face and scribbling that encryption was ‘added and removed here!’.

A few weeks later, another story broke: the US National Security Agency (NSA) had successfully intercepted Google traffic data had been securely encrypted between Google and its users, but sent in clear text between the company's data centres. In September 2013, the New York Times and the Guardian jointly revealed Bullrun, a $250-million-per-year programme to make encrypted internet traffic accessible to the United States’ and United Kingdom's intelligence agencies. Should the state limit and regulate the fast-growing use of cryptography? If so, how? Encryption bears directly on today's two top threats, militant extremism and computer-network breaches – yet it enables prosperity and privacy. The trigger is a dilemma: the power of ciphers protects citizens when they read, bank and shop online – and the power of ciphers protects foreign spies, terrorists and criminals when they pry, plot and steal. Encryption policy is becoming a crucial test of the values of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century.

Tor links that work 2016