Banning all encryption won't make us safer, no matter what David Cameron says

Prime Minister David Cameron has quite literally called for the end of privacy on the Internet as we know it: in a radical speech on Monday he said that, since threats of terrorism existed in the world, there should be no “means of communications” that the UK “cannot read.” He appears to be suggesting that he’s in favour of outlawing the use of end-to-end encryption – which, in turn, could ban some of the most popular texting messaging apps in the world, including WhatsApp and iMessage.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before the world’s governments started using the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo, a rallying cry for free speech rights, to justify more censorship and speech-chilling surveillance. It’s particularly galling, though, that Cameron and other world leaders are leading the charge so swiftly after the historic unity rally in Paris over the weekend. You remember it: the one that was supposed to show solidarity with the murdered cartoonists’ devotion to press freedom.

Even Cameron acknowledged yesterday that his proposed powers were “very intrusive.” What he didn’t acknowledge, however, was there’s absolutely no public evidence Charlie Hebdo murderers used encryption to communicate at all. Even if they did, we know from the Snowden documents that the GCHQ or NSA still have ways to access their messages. But neither of these facts stopped Cameron from cravenly capitalizing on the tragedy in an attempt to push for powers his government has been from demanding for years.

Just as happened when the FBI director proposed forcing companies like Apple and Google to build a backdoor into their products so American authorities could conduct more surveillance, Cameron’s proposal will be ridiculed by security experts. Encryption is used to protect banking credentials, private medical information, and private communications of hundreds of millions of people who have nothing to do with terrorism. Given the rash of headline criminal hacks, like the recent Sony scandal, one would think leaders would be encouraging the use of encryption to protect data, rather than make it illegal.

As for the potential ban on messaging apps, Cameron is in fine company there. In fact, just a few days ago, a court in Iran ordered three text messaging apps, including WhatsApp, blocked across the entire country. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reportedly opposed the move. So actually, the Prime Minister of UK is to the right of the President of Iran on this issue.

While Cameron’s proposal was first out of the gate, you can be sure other world leaders will soon join him. In fact, just before the unity march on Sunday, a group of EU foreign ministers got together and not only vowed to pursue more surveillance authorities, but pledged to pressure Internet companies to start censoring more content online.

Back in the US, President Obama was heavily criticized for not attending the rally in Paris, but his understated response was actually a welcome respite from the grandstanding by many of the other world leaders who marched arm in arm. Daniel Wickman brilliantly documented on Twitter how the list dignitaries attending was something of a Who’s Who of free speech oppressors of the world.

Lost in all this is the fact that Charlie Hebdo has spent much of its life as a publication fending off French anti-speech laws. As law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in the Washington Post this weekend, “the biggest threat to French free speech isn’t terrorism. It’s the government.” He recounted how Charlie Hebdo had repeatedly been been threatened with prosecution in the past and has been sued countless times more. Turley then described how a variety of French anti-speech laws have other landed non-violent offenders in jail.

As if on cue, as the Guardian reported Monday, a prosecutor’s office in France opened an investigation into controversial comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala over an allegedly offensive Facebook post.

The past week has marked not only mourning for Charlie Hebdo staff but a vigorous debate online over whether the magazine was biting satire or racist filth. The debate is exactly why governments should not be in the business of outlawing controversial speech. Nor should they be, as Cameron is proposing, getting into the business of radical surveillance measures that would actually make us all less safe. After all, as American courts have rightly held, freedom of speech also has to protect the encryption code in which we place so much trust.