GOVERNMENT CALLS ON TECH COMPANIES TO CO-OPERATE

The head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Robert Hannigan, has called for co-operation over the issues caused by encryption between government agencies and technological companies.

Encryption is the way in which a file is protected. This process is achieved by scrambling the file contents, so that it can only be read by persons with the correct encryption key or privileges to unscramble or decipher the message or file.

There is a need in the technological industry for a new relationship amongst academia, civil society and government agencies. As the UK government moves to put services online for its citizens, it argues that, it is not true that nothing can be done without weakening encryption. Speaking at an MIT event in Boston, Hannigan said “the rational response to encryption is not to label it as bad, but to think of pragmatic ways of responding to it.”

One can question how much encryption does one need? This decision rests upon UK politicians as they are the very individuals that set parameters on encryption. The Government and the private sector tech companies can co-operate and work on encryption however the trade-offs or consequences of the decisions wear off on the whole society. 

How much encryption is too much encryption? This sort of questions suffice as the FBI respond to recent terror attacks as they engage in a legal battle with Apple Inc. over its data encryption standards. Based on this, the government should rethink their decision about maintaining end-to-end data encryption.