Our lives are intertwined with technology, and people must be able to communicate privately and securely. End-to-end encryption is the best protection, shielding individuals' personal data from prying eyes. As employed in Apple's new iCloud implementation and in messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal, this technology ensures that only the sender and intended recipients can access a message's content. This not only protects individuals from cyberattacks but also empowers citizens to communicate without fear of surveillance, censorship and warrantless searches — whether by government, Big Tech, data brokers or others.

The public wants strong cybersecurity protections; the ability to conduct private conversations without surveillance; and safety from abusive governments, retaliatory bosses, abusive partners, fraudsters, intrusive marketers and criminals. To that end, the public is adopting secure messaging rapidly. WhatsApp's user base grew over 12% last year and now has 2 billion monthly active users. In January 2022, Signal Messenger had an estimated 40 million active users, not including the surge in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

That is why civil society, including the ACLU, criticized Apple's 2021 plans to build tools to scan private communications on iPhones. Apple planned to update iPhone software so that it would scan photos users planned to send for child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. Apple would learn when a user had uploaded a threshold number of images that matched known CSAM imagery. But privacy advocates, technologists and human rights groups said Apple was building a new form of surveillance which posed serious risks to privacy and civil liberties. With this backdoor feature, governments could compel Apple to detect and report images that politicians find objectionable because they praise opposition parties, mock political leaders, celebrate protest movements, promote disapproved political messages or circumvent government censorship regimes.

To its credit, Apple listened. Now, Apple has what it calls "Advanced Data Protection": Content shared in iCloud Photos, Drive folders and Notes will be end-to-end encrypted if all participants enable Advanced Data Protection. Meta has also announced steps to offer end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messages. These improvements are long overdue.

Almost everything we communicate — our emails, direct messages, clicks, "likes," shared photos, search engine queries and web browser histories — is logged by our cell phones, internet service providers and other online services and available to governments. Physical surveillance is also at an all-time peak. Street cameras, for example, have proliferated and increasingly feed into systems with face surveillance and license plate-reading capability. We live in a golden age for surveillance; governments and corporations have more information about people than ever before.

They like the new data bonanza and want to keep it. They want to spy on what we do and say — not only for legitimate purposes or constrained by legal protections. The Mexican government investigates individuals advocating a sugary drinks tax. In the U.S., the Department of Justice pressed Google to turn over a reporter's emails; police raided offices of a newspaper investigating allegations against the chief of police; and federal authorities are investigating a reporter who uncovered video suggesting Fox News covered up disturbing comments from a celebrity interviewed by one of its hosts. Additionally, Americans' messages get swept up in bulk during warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance and are secretly searched without judicial oversight.

Several organizations initiated PR campaigns excoriating Apple and Meta for providing the public with more safety and security, blaming encryption for CSAM. These campaigns use triggering imagery of young, sad children, tugging on our heartstrings and making us sick to our stomachs thinking about abuse inflicted on vulnerable members of society.

These legitimate emotions threaten to make us forget those whose human rights and safety interests are protected by encryption. It is impossible to quantify the fallout from the persecution of people betrayed by anti-encryption messaging: an increase in domestic violence, chilling effects on journalists and whistleblowers, concentration of power in the hands of corporate and government elites, silencing dissent and neutralizing political opposition. Anecdotes of reporters, activists, grieving families and civil rights lawyers who have been spied on fail to encompass the scope of the surveillance problem or its impact on the public interest.

There's a short-sighted belief among some politicians and law enforcement that political success in undermining encryption would have the added benefit of providing police with cheap, easy and plentiful access to sensitive data — for all sorts of investigations. But this approach will cause more harms than it resolves. Encryption prevents crimes. Everyone needs safety, and in a world where our information is everywhere for use and abuse by criminals, cops and corporations alike, encryption — and cybersecurity generally — should be a priority for all.

Jennifer Stisa Granick is a surveillance and cybersecurity counsel and Daniel Kahn Gillmor is a senior staff technologist, both for the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all. To find out more about the ACLU and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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