--- title: Human Rights Depend on Encryption description: Welcome to the second crypto-wars—this time, it's personal canonical: https://time.com/4255742/human-rights-encryption/ author: Brian Knappenberger article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-17T11:00:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:35.605Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Human Rights Depend on Encryption og:description: Welcome to the second crypto-wars—this time, it's personal og:url: https://time.com/4255742/human-rights-encryption/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt74d0de2456016b7f/69888b36cd1bba0f6a6ffddf/brian-knappenberger.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Key Speakers At The Aspen Ideas Festival og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Human Rights Depend on Encryption twitter:description: Welcome to the second crypto-wars—this time, it's personal twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt74d0de2456016b7f/69888b36cd1bba0f6a6ffddf/brian-knappenberger.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Human Rights Depend on Encryption > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=7167fb97-26fd-4934-bdcc-2b578ffaaddb&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Watch: What You Need to Know on Apple & The FBI [Watch (HLS stream): Watch: What You Need to Know on Apple & The FBI](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QQJktAKR.m3u8) (1:45)  _Published 2016-03-08. Alex Fitzpatrick tells you what you need to know about the latest Apple controversy_ by [Brian Knappenberger](https://time.com/author/brian-knappenberger/) ## Brian Knappenberger Mar 17, 2016 11:00 AM UTC  Brian Knappenberger speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Aspen, CO, on July 1, 2014. Brian Knappenberger speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Aspen, CO, on July 1, 2014. Matthew Staver—Bloomberg/Getty Images by [Brian Knappenberger](https://time.com/author/brian-knappenberger/) ## Brian Knappenberger Mar 17, 2016 11:00 AM UTC On a recent morning in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Diego Jorge Dzodan was [arrested](http://time.com/4243147/facebook-executive-arrested-brazil/) on his way to work, because of his work. Dzodan is Facebook’s Latin American Vice President. Police took him into custody after a daily fine amounting to about $250,000 failed to compel Facebook to reveal personal information about several of the [100 million Brazilian users](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/world/americas/brazil-whatsapp-facebook.html) of the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp. Police say the WhatsApp users were involved in organized crime and drug trafficking. For its part, WhatsApp could not have complied with police if it wanted to. By design, the service uses end-to-end encryption and does not store its users’ data. Dzodan [spent the night](http://time.com/4245015/facebook-executive-released/) in jail. The standoff was a particularly brutal variation of the fight currently raging between [Apple and the FBI](http://time.com/topic/apple-v-fbi/). Dzodan’s experience highlights the complicated balancing act between law enforcement and the efforts of many technology companies to provide basic privacy and security in the digital age. It also shows just how much law enforcement agencies around the world want to have access to all of our digital communications and personal data. And when it comes to personal data, there’s a lot of it. Most of the critical details that make up who we are is being collected by private companies. Some of them have familiar names, some don’t, but the collection is enormous. It is easy to see why it would be tempting to the world’s police. There are technologies like [wi-fi sniffers](http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/is-wi-fi-sniffing-a-crime-12-09-13/) that can track your movements in department stores, and [audio beacons](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/your-phone-is-literally-listening-to-your-tv/416712/) that use imperceptible sounds to connect devices like TVs and smart phones. Companies like [Rocket Fuel](http://rocketfuel.com/) brag about their use of artificial intelligence to create targeted political ads that hit you at your most vulnerable. Stored searches and data brokers comb public records and then auction that personal data off for pennies. Technology has created a shockingly accurate personal electronic visage of you, a ghost in the machine. As fictional President Frank Underwood’s adviser says in the latest season of House of Cards: “If you know what people are searching for, you know everything, their hopes, their fears, what they think about when they are staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night.” It’s true. Until now that surveillance economy has driven Silicon Valley. Information, as they say, is the new oil. But what happens when companies try to hold onto it, use it as a part of their service, but reassure you it is safe? Law enforcement interest aside, can they even realistically make that claim? Barely a week has gone by in the last year where there hasn’t been an enormous data breach. Some companies are minimizing the data they hold, not wanting to find themselves either an arm of law enforcement or a victim of an attack. That collected information is becoming a liability. As someone told me at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, instead of personal data being the new oil, it is becoming the new asbestos. Many government departments believe strong encryption is critical for national security, after all more than [21 million records](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/opm-hack-government-finally-starts-notifying-21-5-million-victims-n437126) were at risk from a massive and damaging data breach at the United States Office of Personnel Management. What the FBI is compelling Apple to do is create a tool to undermine one of their main security features, a tool that once created could also be used by criminals and foreign governments. Law enforcement in Brazil doesn’t just want Facebook to turn over data, they want WhatsApp to be an entirely different product, one in which they have some say in its design. That raises a pretty critical question: Should a government be able to force a company to make the sort of product they think best helps law enforcement? Where does this stop? Think “Internet of things” when self-driving cars could theoretically auto-lock and drive a suspect to a precinct, at the request of how many governments? We are in the middle of the second crypto-wars. Since I’m a filmmaker I can’t resist adding the tagline “this time, it’s personal.” To have a future any of us want to live in we need individual freedom, privacy and basic security for the information that is now the foundation of our lives. Real national security, and human rights depend on encryption. We cannot throw out basic civil liberties and protections just because we live in the digital age. ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ] [00:05] Apple is under a judge's orders to help the FBI unlock [00:08] a phone used by a suspected killer. He's been linked [00:11] to terrorist groups. The government thinks that inside. [00:13] Information about his planning process might be on the [00:16] phone but they're not even sure there's anything [00:18] valuable there. Still the Feds have a warrant but the [00:21] iPhone is locked by a password. They're afraid that if [00:23] they enter the wrong code too many times, the iPhone [00:26] will basically self destruct, deleting any valuable data. [00:30] But Apple is refusing to help. They're asking for a back [00:33] door into the iPhone Specifically to build a software tool [00:37] that could break the encryption system which protects [00:39] personal information on every iPhone. Apple says [00:42] helping the FBI would mean creating a backdoor that [00:45] could let hackers access millions of other iPhones. Tim [00:49] Cook, Apple's CEO says that's like hacking Apples own [00:52] users Apple also says the government's request is [00:55] unconstitutional. It fears that agreeing to the request [00:59] would mean the government could spy on anybody's [01:01] phone. The company's reputation for privacy is on the [01:04] line too. But on the other hand, Apple is taking a big [01:06] PR risk by refusing to help the government solve a [01:09] terrorism case. Couple side are doping in the court. [01:12] But the law around this issue isn't really clear. A judge [01:15] in a separate but similar case recently rolled in favor of [01:18] Apple, that could sway the result in this fight. But lots [01:21] of people say it's up to congress not the court to write [01:24] new laws bounds to privacy and security. Either way [01:28] don't expect to resolution any time soon. Congress is it [01:31] known to move quickly specially during in election [01:34] year. Some people expect the fight to go all the way to [01:37] the supreme court in that process could take years. 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