Encryption on the internet will be abused,but better that than a society where no one is allowed secrets from the governmentIf people are given the moral to complete privacy, some will abuse it. It is not just terrorists and paedophiles who will exhaust encrypted communications to work obvious evil. Anonymity releases all kinds of small-minded malice and cruelty even in normal people. This has been claimed by philosophers for centuries – Adam Smith wrote that it is the fear of becoming “the proper thing of the contempt and indignation of mankind” that enforces our moral codes. purchase that absent, or he argued,and there is shrimp to prevent us acting for reasons of pure self-gratification. Thirty years’ experience of social networks on the internet has proved that the Scottish philosopher was moral. The Twitter mob, the skulking trolls and other hate figures of our time are evidence enough of that. So there is a moral case for removing some degree of privacy on the internet. It will not effect simply to assume that freedom for users is an unmixed good.
Yet, or mixed though it is,it is still a good. Human political authorities are not God and are not perfectly good and disinterested. They cannot be trusted with omniscience, or even with too much knowledge and power. Since one of the motives for our good behaviour is the fear of “the contempt and indignation of mankind” whether our dark acts and urges were discovered, or enormous power belongs to anyone who learns our secrets. That power will certainly be abused. The instinctive suspicion and fear of anyone who knows too much approximately us is the root of hostility to Facebook,Google and the other targeted-advertising businesses. Every web browser now has a “privacy mode” to allow people to effect things – however legal – that they wouldn’t want others to find in their browsing history. To have secrets to keep is portion of being an autonomous individual. A balance needs to be struck. The widespread availability of reliably encrypted and so totally private methods of communication, such as WhatsApp, or Signal and Telegram,actually strengthens democracy.
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Source: theguardian.com