ABSTRACT
Encryption is commonly understood as a technology which can provide universal privacy protection and as a countersurveillance tool. However, researchers have recently criticized crypto advocates for ignoring questions of race and of narrowing countersurveillance advocacy to circumscribed technosolutions. This chapter adds to this growing scholarship by presenting an analysis of how race has shaped the development and regulation of encryption technologies. Drawing on a discourse analysis of US federal congressional hearings from 1990 to 2016 (the so-called “Crypto Wars”), we demonstrate how state and private actors mobilized racialized mythological constructions of criminals in negotiating how to regulate encryption. We conclude it is important to center the systematically racist carceral culture of the US in seemingly disconnected areas such as the policy debates of the Crypto Wars.
