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Opinion

Encryption Is Not a Crime

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Contrary to what some policymakers seem to believe, whether naively or maliciously, encryption is not a crime. Anyone asserting encryption is a tool for crime is either painfully misinformed or is attempting to manipulate legislators to gain oppressive power over the people.

The Dangers of End-to-End Encryption

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In the digital age, nothing is more important than convenience and easy access to data. Unfortunately, there has been an alarming trend among technologists to implement End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) in their applications, to the detriment of all the important work being done by countless organizations, including the best and brightest intelligence agencies and big tech companies.

No, Privacy is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset

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In my work as a privacy advocate, I regularly encounter two types of discourse that I find very damaging to privacy as a whole. The first one is the idea that privacy is dead, implying it's not worth putting any effort to protect personal data anymore. This is the abdication mindset. This attitude is the one that scares me the most because without giving it a fight then of course the battle is lost in advance. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, privacy is dead if you let it die.

State of the Web App: Current Woes and Promising Futures

The concept of a progressive web app is enticing: an application using web technologies that is inherently cross-platform (since it runs in a browser) and acts like a native app, even functioning offline. Support for PWAs in traditionally locked-down platforms like iOS means that PWAs can give users the freedom to install apps without having to go through Apple’s App Store. But there are problems with web content that PWAs haven't solved.

Where are all the Multi-Party Relays?

Multi-Party Relays (MPRs) are a technology that aims to provide better privacy protections than VPNs do. MPRs showed a lot of promise when they first emerged, but years later there are fewer options than ever. What happened?

Hide Nothing

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, the US government enacted laws that weakened citizen privacy in the name of national emergency. This sent up many red flags for human rights and privacy advocates.

Move Fast and Break Things

Mark Zuckerberg does not look comfortable on stage. Yet, there he was proclaiming that “the future is private”. If someone has to tell you that they care about your privacy, they probably don’t.