Long before the technological age, Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” In other words, someone who sacrifices their privacy for their security deserves none. A hot button issue at the moment is whether tech companies should purposely weaken their encryption and security in order to provide government the opportunity to seize data and information related to crime or terror.

There are two sides to this issue. On one hand, every other non-tech system in the world has a lock and key. Police (in the U.S.) are allowed to serve a warrant and legally gain access to a locked location. Even the most private hermit in the world is obligated to open his house to the police if they show up at his door with a warrant. Based on the law as it was written before cybersecurity even existed, it would make sense that tech systems would need to be able to “open their doors” to the government if their owner was served a warrant.

On the other hand, privacy is the expectation and the current law of the land when it comes to technology. In a physical system such as a house, there is much more preventing a thief from breaking in than just a lock or alarm. First, a person needs to be in the physical vicinity. They want to avoid being seen by neighbors or inhabitants of the house. They need to be able to get away without leaving behind DNA evidence or being caught. In the world of technology, thieves don’t need physical access to a system. They don’t have to worry about DNA. They don’t have to be worried about their photo being taken by a nosy neighbor. Just the first point alone means that the magnitude of potential thieves in a cyber setting is much, much higher than in a physical setting. Therefore, companies creating any loophole that allows the government access is weakening their security and allowing criminals to access more vulnerabilities in the system. Purposefully creating these vulnerabilities just wouldn’t make sense.

There’s a second argument against creating backdoors for the government; the slippery slope. For the police to serve a warrant, there must be probable cause. There is no such language written into the laws allowing the FBI to issue national security letters. This means that there is no guarantee that the FBI will limit their requests to situations where there is probable cause. Indeed, Jennifer Lynch investigates how this has been happening already in “New Report: FBI Can Access Hundreds of Millions of Face Recognition Photos”. She points out that in a database of 411.9 million face images, “[t]he FBI has done little to make sure that its search results (which the Bureau calls “investigative leads”) do not include photos of innocent people.”

Ultimately, I find the last argument to be the most compelling. If there was more transparency in government search and seizure of tech information, then I would be more comfortable with allowing governmental backdoor access. But because there are limited controls, and national security letters come with gag orders for the company receiving the letter, there are very few controls in place to prevent the FBI from abusing this power. If security were to weaken and private information became inadvertently public, companies could base hiring and firing decisions on information they have no reason to know. It may become more easy for credit cards or identities to be stolen. Sensitive health records could become public knowledge. These are risks that the government doesn’t currently seem willing or able to address.