How can we educate the wider public that breaking crypto makes everything less secure. Most of the arguments I've seen in the wider context seem to split down tech/non-tech lines with this being the key point that's not understood.
But, of course, the government won't have to use breakable crypto; only the citizenry will be beholden to that requirement. So instead, it will merely be those 'essential' industrial players, now constantly finding their foreign rivals to have the upper hand in trade negotiations and to seemingly predict their moves.
I think that's the key here: broken crypto, on a large scale, doesn't just mean a panopticon; it also means whoever's using it will inevitably suffer large-scale economic stagnation. Standardizing on breakable crypto is equivalent to making laws with large loopholes to allow industrial espionage into the country.
If you want to scare people into defending crypto, point out that it's the shield on the arm of the negotiators who sign things like the TPP agreement. Small business owners—even if they themselves have no trade secrets to protect—will be directly affected by whether crypto can protect the secrets of their industry from their foreign equivalents. (Your local {sports clothing, christmas ornament, office furniture} industry recently take a nosedive? Maybe someone was cornered into a bad deal because all your local supply-chain logistics were plain on the table to China, but theirs were a mystery to us.) And small business owners are a pretty good voting bloc.
It's also too subtle and abstract to ever compete with "Apple is helping Terrorists hide stuff!"
From far away, it didn't look like it did.
Then after reaching the public there must be a compelling relatable story. Applied did it a bit when replying to FBI's request:
-- Weak encryption means more identity theft. This is a good one. Everyone knows someone who lost a phone, a wallet and then thieves emptied bank accounts, caused grief, time wasted and pain for years to come. This works and is great.
Others I can think of:
-- Point to large scale data breaches, even Government's own OPM office was hacked by Chinese. Having back-doors in everything means more such large scale failures.
-- Take their own rhetoric and spin it around. Look Snowden stole all those documents right under the nose of the NSA. Point to their own incompetence and say imagine future such incidents with a perpetrator walking away with "master keys". Remember to repeat phrases like "it is not a matter of if but a matter of when". That was used by talking head security experts on TV post 9/11, this one works great. I like it.
-- Point to physical analogies where master key has been lost. Was it a case for NYFD or some place like that. Where it was mandated all these places have a master key and it was copied and used for criminal activity.
-- Find something with terrorists. Nobody will ever defend terrorists. Any case where Chinese terrorists hacked Google through a backdoor created to handle government's access to data.
-- Everyone loves freedom of speech and hates when worthy dissidents in countries we don't like are martyred. Point out how strong encryption has saved lives and provided the only channel for communication freedom fighters.
The list goes on... but that's the gist basically
I would point out that these "keys" are actually computer files that act like digital keys (obviously), and the bad guy will instantly make 100,000 plus copies of the key and distribute it to his network of bad guys (bot net) and begin breaking into hundreds of thousands of houses every hour.
Also, what happened to all the talk about cybersecurity? It seems like the TV media was interested in cybersecurity for awhile, but I don't hear about it anymore.
Even though we know it's impossible, we should disregard that and lay out common sense tenants that such system would require, even if it can't be feasibly built. We could then base our arguments on those tenants, and those are public fights I think could be won, because its things non technical people could understand.
For instance, one tenant could be any key escrow system must be open source. We can't base it off keeping the code secret, as then if the code is ever stolen or leaked, the whole system is compromised.
If you can win those arguments, and it just happens such a system can't be built due to the laws of mathematics, you then fall back to arguing which tenants you should break, and ideally breaking any of the tenants would be unpalatable.
My concern is that any increase in already substantial state powers poses a twofold threat. Firstly, it makes future increases more difficult to oppose. Secondly, it risks falling into the hands of irresponsible future office holders.
I suggest that you wouldn't be able to trust your government with your text messages if you fell into one of the following three categories: freedom fighter, wrongly suspected of crime due to unchallengeable secret evidence and targeted for state-imposed restrictions without explanation, actual criminal (possibly under a homophobic, misogynistic or racist law).
I'm not sure about the banks, but maybe some of the above applies to them, too.
The New Zealand parliament has identified five "institutionalised checks on executive power". (They are a codified constitution, an elected head of state, a bicameral legislature, devolved powers and proportional representation.[0]) Only two exist in my country (the United Kingdom), neither of which is available to me, because one of our legislative chambers is unelected and (like the majority of the population) I don't live under the jurisdiction of a devolved legislature.
I don't understand your last sentence. By "insurance", do you primarily mean checks and balances? If so, which ones matter to you?
[0] See Table 2 on this page http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/parl-support/research-papers/...
Laws dictating how to/not to encrypt things make news really quickly so it takes even takes out all the fun in security research.
(or, closer to what the article states: it's like requiring safe manufacturers to open any safe the government gives them, or at least require the manufacturer to provide technical assistance in breaking into their own safe)