We are now living in a world where governments — your government and my government — are desperately trying to break encryption. This is bad, and this will get worse once breaking encryption means people can die,” he said.
“The way to think of it is as one world, one network, and one answer.”
Schneier placed the government urge to weaken encryption onto an historical context dating back to the 1950s and the founding of the US National Security Agency (NSA). It had two missions.
“One of them was to defend US military communications from eavesdropping, and the other was to eavesdrop on foreign military communications,” Schneier said.
“The reason that worked is that our stuff and their stuff were different. Everything about them was different. And that’s no longer true,” he said.