The Department of Justice, led by U.S. lawmakers and Attorney General William Barr, is reportedly considering a total ban on cryptography.
At a summit in the White House, Barr mentioned his opposition to end-to-end encryption. He said "military-level" security features could lead to human trafficking on closed networks.
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"We live in a digital age. Like everyone else, traffickers are increasingly relying on digital communications and the Internet. We are increasingly relying on digital evidence to discover and deal with these offenders. However, more and more evidence is encrypted status."
Barr and MP Lindsey Graham are working on a draft bill. The bill aims to ban inappropriate content on websites and social media. The intention is positive, however, it requires government officials to gain everyone's privacy through a backdoor. Therefore, users who use the private messaging app through WhatsApp or Apple devices will inevitably need to give up their privacy.
Moreover, the existence of this backdoor may be exploited by evildoers and used for immoral activities.
In addition, prohibiting or restricting encryption affects not only personal data, but also cryptocurrencies. The value and information exchange of many blockchain networks is anonymous.
Fundstrat's chief financial analyst Thomas Lee wrote on Twitter:
"If this bill is passed, it will have some negative effects on crypto and digital assets, because these assets are based on cryptography."
Since the Snowden incident, people have become increasingly resentful of the privacy monitoring of regulators. The basic idea of cryptocurrency is to achieve decentralization through cryptography and distributed consensus.
However, the above proposal will strengthen the centralized control of personal data and information transmission.
In fact, cryptography has long been a part of people's lives. The Internet works without cryptography. When you visit every website, you need to use cryptography. The https on the address bar is cryptography. In order to ensure that you are connected to the correct website, ensure that your data provider cannot read the encrypted data you send, such as your bank information, and only the bank and you can see the relevant content.
So, how do you disable cryptography? This can be very difficult to achieve.
