If 2015 was the year tech became the Bad Guy—a popularly understood symbol of inequality and insecurity, instead of the lauded liberator of the early 2010s—then 2016 will be the year it becomes a full-fledged Enemy of the People. That's because the chaos unleashed by the tech-enabled Arab Spring, which from a distance looked like a casting off of repressive shackles, has curdled and made landfall in the US.
In the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, politicians began asking for a "back door" into encrypted online communications—a measure the tech industry will reliably resist. Edward Snowden's fight against such policies made him a hero (at least in some circles) but back then the threat was abstract. We have already seen how fear-mongering politicians can convince Americans to shut out Muslims in a hazy appeal to security. If they ratchet up the rhetoric on encryption, this could become a very ugly year for tech.
