> Our hero has to stop this key from falling into bad people’s hands, or recover it before it’s too late. Perhaps at one point they utter something like the tit

> Our hero has to stop this key from falling into bad people’s hands, or recover it before it’s too late. Perhaps at one point they utter something like the title of this post. You walk out of the theatre two hours later entertained but wondering why someone would be silly enough to create such a powerful artefact. To the degree that this is the driving metaphor of the rest of the post, I'm inclined to suggest that there is cause for hope: While the legacy states argue about what they call "policy" (meaning, the outcomes of their legislative and judicial proceedings), the focus of an increasingly vibrant, thoughtful, and massive part of the human condition is instead focused on the actual machinery of human communication. In other words, the policy decisions of states ultimately can be relegated to a fairly small degree of influence - and, if we wish, complete irrelevance - in the face of how the internet _actually works_. To utilize the metaphor: the battle for our hero - and I realize this might be less exciting - is becoming much more about living in a world where such a "key" is impossible, rather than a harrowing action journey to stop it from falling into the wrong hands. End-to-end encryption is extremely commonplace now. Even if you find yourself disappointed at your friends who still insist on voyeurism in the form of plaintext SMS conversations, consider that even a decade ago, few of your friends even used signal or telegram or whatsapp. Two decades ago, none. > Law enforcement has more power than ever before because of digital technology. They are able to collect, process, summarise and track much more efficiently and at much greater scale... While the alarm of these matters is proper to raise (I think we all agree on that?), I'm not sure this degree of pessimism is warranted. The proliferation of cameras has made perjurious practices by cops - once a normal and integral part of their self-promotion - quite difficult. Similarly, the easy availability of textual representations of legal and constitutional protections has given people a much firmer leg to stand on in refusing to answer questions or consent to searches. Finally - and perhaps most importantly - the entire existence of professional law enforcement (and prisons) as the legacy of a plantation economy has become common knowledge, and scholars who have been documenting this transition are no longer working in the dark. I think we're closer to ending this silly experiment - and finishing the incomplete abolition that stalled in the 1860s - than we have been since the US civil war. In fact, I think it's entirely possible that my 8 year old will be able to live in a world where there are no special access to badges and guns by state agents, and where peace and justice become everyone's responsibility. And on that topic, I wrote a piece a while ago addressing many of the same issues as TFA, but from the perspective of a parent of an information age child, and the importance of strong encryption for kids in particular: https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryption/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucy...