On Oct. 21, the world marks Global Encryption Day, and this year’s message is simple: end-to-end encryption protects us all, and we need to protect it. Both claims deserve attention.
Start with “protects us all.” Every time you buy something online, check a bank balance, refill a prescription or text a photo of your kids, encryption scrambles the data so only the intended recipient can read it. Encryption secures power grid controls, hospital records and the small business’s payroll. Encryption shields the dissident from the regime and the journalist’s source from exposure. Privacy is not a convenience for people with something to hide. Rather, privacy is the ordinary condition of a free person, and encryption is how that condition survives the digital age.
Encryption will matter even more tomorrow. AI agents will soon book, buy and sign on our behalf, and every one of those transactions will depend on proof that the agent is who it claims to be and that no one has tampered with its instructions. Connected cars, medical devices and home robots will need the same assurance. Quantum computing threatens to break today’s encryption codes, which is why the federal government finalized new quantum-resistant cryptographic standards in 2024. The answer to tomorrow’s threats is stronger encryption, not weaker.
Now the second claim: “We need to protect it.” We have had to defend encryption before. In the 1990s, Washington treated strong encryption as a munition, restricted its export alongside weapons, spent three years investigating the programmer who gave away the encryption tool Pretty Good Privacy and even pushed the Clipper Chip, a government-held master key to private encryption. Thankfully, the courts recognized that encryption code is speech, the export rules collapsed and Clipper died. But the damage lingered. Deliberately weakened “export-grade” encryption stayed buried in software until researchers showed in 2015 that attackers could still exploit it.
The 1990s left another legacy. Congress required phone networks to build in wiretap access. Three decades later, the Chinese hackers known as Salt Typhoon reportedly broke into those very systems. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency responded by urging Americans to use encrypted messaging apps. “Encryption is your friend,” one agency official said. A backdoor built for the good guys does not check IDs.
Yet the pressure to chip away at our right to encryption continues. The British government ordered Apple to open its encrypted iCloud backups, and Apple stopped offering the feature to new U.K. users rather than hand government a master key. European governments keep pressing to scan private messages. American lawmakers have floated “lawful access” bills that would force companies to unlock data they cannot unlock without weakening security for everyone.
Code can’t distinguish a warrant from a burglar. A backdoor for one is a backdoor for all. The free-market answer is to let people and companies choose the strongest protection available, punish criminals for their crimes, and keep government from weakening the tools we all depend on. The proof is overwhelming: When government weakens our ability to protect ourselves, it provides a path for us to be harmed.
Encryption protects us all. On Global Encryption Day, let’s resolve to protect encryption.