The more so-called security measures are taken the more control and the less freedom is granted. Whereas criminals are flexible in their computer work/digital existence, the average person cannot be. So it is her/him who gets punished with an increase of control.
Of course security can be in favor of the population as well - and this is the case if cryptography is legal so that everyone has access to it to protect his/her data. This one needs for e-commerce, secure payments and transmission of private data, mostly e-mails or access to websites where one needs a password. E-mails are nothing else than postcards, letters without envelopes. Without encryption they are easy to open, read and trace back, even without knowing the password. Rumors that Echelon works with a list of key-words, controlling any e-mail in the world and reacting to words of that list, led to actions like the Jam Eschelon Day, last time held on October 21st, 1999, to confuse the espionage system.
for more information on Jam Eschelon Day see:
But the respect for privacy stands for an essential values in democratic societies.
So, how can it be regarded a governmental risk?
At a conference:
"How many people here fear a greater risk
from government abuses of power
than from criminal activity?"
The majority raised their hands,
one participant shouted "What's the difference?"
(anonymous)
If governments really care for the people and want to fight against cybercriminality they should rather support the work on the latest technologies for encryption than to restrict their access. Or even better: they should not intervene at all - to make sure they do not build in any trapdoors. Though it is already too late for discussion like this one as the trapdoors are already part of most of the key-systems. Rumors about PGP and trapdoors do not help the confidence in cryptology.
for information about the risks of cryptography see:
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3rd cent. Leiden papyrus: medical information gets enciphered to stop abuses
8th cent. - Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil ibn Ahmad ibn 'Amr ibn Tammam al Farahidi al-Zadi al Yahmadi finds the solution for a Greek cryptogram by first of all finding out the plaintext behind the encryption, a method which never got out of date. Afterwards he writes a book on cryptography.
- cipher alphabets for magicians are published
1250 the English monk Roger Bacon writes cipher-descriptions. At that time the art of enciphering was a popular game in monasteries
1379 Gabrieli di Lavinde develops the nomenclature-code for Clement VII (114); a code-system made out of ciphers and codes, which kept being irreplaceable until the 19th century
1392 (probably) the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer writes the book The Equatorie of the Planetis, which contains several passages in ciphers made out of letters, digits and symbols
1412 for the first time ciphers including different substitutions for each letter are developed (in Arabic)
~1467 invention of the "Captain Midnight Decoder Badge", the first polyalphabetic cipher (disk); the inventor, Leon Battista Alberti, also called the father of Western cryptography, uses his disk for enciphering and deciphering at the same time
15th/16th century nearly every state, especially England and France, has people working on en- and deciphering for them
1518 the first printed book on cryptology is written by the German monk Johannes Trithemius. He also changes the form of polyalphabetic cipher from disks into rectangulars
1533 the idea to take a pass-phrase as the key for polyalphabetic cipher is realized by Giovan Batista Belaso
1563 Giovanni Battista Porta suggests to use synonyms and misspellings to irritate cryptoanalysts
1585 Blaise de Vigenère has the idea to use former plaintexts or ciphertexts as new keys; he invents the
1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded for the attempt to organize the murder of Queen Elisabeth I., whose agents find out about Mary's plans with the help of decryption
1588 the first book in shorthand is published
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