Critical analysis and insight that navigates the complex implications of ongoing encryption debates.

End-to-end encrypted messaging is effective at protecting the content of your messages from being read as they travel across the Internet to your friends and family. This is why the Citizen Lab has released Secure Your Chats: a Net Alert resource that outlines how to safely use end-to-end encryption.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced that the company would battle a court order requiring it to turn over information stored on an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters to the FBI. Christopher Parsons and Morgan Marquis-Boire outline the possibility that the creation of a backdoor would be used as a precedent for future cases.

Pakistan and BlackBerry have agreed to delay the shutdown of BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server (BES) by one month. This comes months after Pakistan initially ordered the shutdown of the company’s encrypted messaging services for businesses. Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons weighed in on the policy reasons for the disagreement.

This article, written by Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons and CIPPIC Staff lawyer Tamir Israel, analyzes how successive federal governments of Canada have actively sought to weaken the communications encryption available to Canadians. The article covers regulations imposed on mobile telecommunications providers, state authorities’ abilities to compel decryption keys from telecommunications providers writ large, and Canada’s signals intelligence agency’s deliberate propagation of flawed encryption protocols.

The report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (“SR on FOE”), David Kaye, regarding the use of encryption and anonymity in digital communications, is now available. The SR on FOE submitted this report to the UN Human Rights Council for consideration during its upcoming 29th session; the report is scheduled for discussion on June 17.

In this article, Sarah McKune calls for the encryption and anonymity debate to address the aspects of human rights that are unique to digital space.

In response to the call for submissions of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression regarding the use of encryption and anonymity in digital communications, the Citizen Lab and independent researcher Collin Anderson have submitted a joint analysis, entitled “The need for democratization of digital security solutions to ensure the right to freedom of expression.”