ABSTRACT
This chapter is instructive for readers who have little prior knowledge of encryption. Hackers, civil rights organisations and security agencies have all been involved in struggles over encryption in recent decades. This chapter describes how certain conflict lines can be traced back to the late 1980s. Some important shifts can also be identified: today, no one denies the usefulness of encryption, so the debate is primarily about the degree of state regulation. Indeed, the position of actors is often ambiguous. For example, once can hardly speak of ‘the state’ since state agencies such as the NSA, the FBI or the government can at times be found to assess encryption in radically different ways. By introducing some background information on encryption, this chapter shows that ‘security’ in the context of encryption is always perceived as provisional and that experts understand encryption systems as secure only to the extent that the system has not been proved to be insecure.
