Encryption On and On

Online, Ghana, 4 November 2022, 15:00 UTC

Hosted by Digispace Africa

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Strong encryption is a critical technology that helps keep people, their information, and communications private and secure. It underpins online trust, protects members of vulnerable communities, and safeguards the data of governments, businesses, and citizens from criminals and other malicious actors. However, some governments and organizations are pushing to weaken encryption, which would create a dangerous precedent that compromises the security and privacy of billions of people around the world. As we move towards Global Encryption Day, we call on governments, the Private sector, Civil Society, and Media to reject efforts to undermine encryption and instead pursue policies that enhance, strengthen, and promote use of strong encryption to protect people everywhere.

Following the current trend of people using various online platforms to plan certain activities like demonstrations, cyber-attacks, and terrorist attacks, the issue of encryption is gradually becoming a subject of national security and political debate. There is a debate about whether the government (security agencies) should access to public’s encrypted data, by means of special access backdoor. Others also argue that encryptions in itself prevent security agencies from intercepting or accessing criminal communications. Digispace Africa has seen the need to dialogue on this subject so that the public and the security agencies will be on the same page. Also, there is the need for a critical probe into data protection agencies and laws in the various countries and to see how those agencies are impacting encryption.