In the beginning of the era of man, people talked with each face to face. A personal way of communicating with each other and private one, unless some else was eavesdropping. The evolution of man generated also new forms of communication between people. First the letter came due to the ability of people to express themselves in letters and words. Right now, the telecommunication and text messages and an important form of communication for us. All these new forms of communication are receptive for privacy and safety issues.
For instance, a phone call can be bugged and text messages between people could also be looked into by intelligence agencies. Basically are these main, new, forms of communication not private anymore since it could be possible that there is someone checking the content of these communications all the time. This might seem as a major drawback but on the other hand could screening these types of communication for societal threats, terrorism, also save lives.
Nevertheless are more and more of these communication channels protected by encryption which makes it harder or sometimes even impossible for external parties to look into these “private” messages. Popular at the moment is the “End to End Encryption” of messages on apps like WhatsApp and Facebook. This encryption means that it is indeed difficult to look into the certain messages for 3rd parties but also for the host of these messages platforms. WhatsApp for instance can’t even see their “own” messages that people sent to each other. Sending a spicy picture on the web “seems” to be more safe now. But are we not giving in on something else at the same time?
Is this increase in our privacy/safety feeling towards messaging, indeed such an improvement of our overall safety for instance? The agencies which are more or less responsible for our safety are facing increasingly difficulties regarding looking into our communication channels. So was it last year the FBI that had a broil with Apple because they could not break into a phone of a terrorist. The same thing goes for our communication channels. So what is more important, a higher feeling of privacy/safety when sending someone a message or the higher feeling of safety for the overall population. This is a very difficult trade-off, especially in times where terrorist attacks are a larger threat to our safety than war with another country. Should intelligence agencies get exemption for looking into our communication channels and devices? For which channels is this more important? Will hackers be the world savers of the future I this wat? Or do we just accept the loss of overall safety in favour of our personal feeling of safety and privacy, in a world where almost all information is already on the world wide web? What do you think?