Our rights to enjoy free speech and privacy have been continuously attacked by government, the same manner of government our forefathers fought a civil war with. A little over 200 hundred years later, many of us are still fighting.

When we’re not communicating in person, we’re doing it digitally—which is most of the time. Text or voice, all of it travels over a network that protects what we say. Or not. Today and tomorrow, it’s all about the encryption.

Because at any time they want to know what we say, the trend is for government to prevent companies from using end-to-end (E2E) encryption. Apple caved to this policy back in 2018 when, two years later, they chose to give the FBI access to iCloud backups that once were encrypted with user-controlled keys. Apple now retains access to these keys. They can decrypt user data and hand it over to law enforcement at will. (Services that use iCloud, such as WhatsApp, are equally weakened.)

Apple: 0. Government: won. Privacy: lost.

It’s easy for government to go after a few big service providers. It’s a lot harder for them to go after every. Single. Person.

You and I ought to be using encryption, such as PrismCipher. (And if you don’t use PrismCipher, at least use something.) We should incorporate encryption into our workflow, to secure what we say against those who know they have no need to know.

The issue is E2E protection: from my phone to yours, from my browser to yours and from my inbox to yours. The issue is our enjoyment of free speech and privacy. Not just for today, but for tomorrow. Not so much for us, but for our children and all who come after.

~Mac…