DT Intro: The message below is from a press release issued by Tutanota, the privacy-friendly email provider. We like Tuta and agree with the sentiments expressed below. Disclosure: we do not use their service at DT but members of our team do.
Email encryption - a term barely known ten years ago - is becoming mainstream: When we started building Tutanota in 2011, we always believed that sending an end-to-end encrypted email needs to be as easy as sending a normal email. The numbers prove us right: 66% of all emails sent from Tutanota are end-to-end encrypted.
This is a rise of six per cent compared to 2018 and of a staggering 27% compared to 2015. Encryption - when easy to use - is being used, and that is awesome news for everyone's security on the web.
Yet, now that many people choose to encrypt their emails, governments worldwide try to crack down on encryption, which is a severe threat to freedom and democracy.
If the authorities and politicians now demand access to encrypted communication to prosecute criminals, they ignore the fact that by doing so they weaken the foundation our democracy is built on: The right to privacy and freedom of speech.
Secret services around the world got used to monitoring everyone's internet traffic to filter out potential criminals. While this form of mass surveillance is illegal in most democracies, the Snowden leaks in 2013 demonstrated that secret services still used such techniques simply because these are technically possible.
But today's internet has matured: Websites now enforce traffic via TLS encryption and people can easily encrypt emails end-to-end with Tutanota. Lots of journalists, whistleblowers, and human rights activists depend on securing their online communication. But also normal citizens rely on encryption as it protects their sensitive data - credit card numbers, social security numbers, medical data, etc. - against malicious attackers on the web.
Breaking encryption would have severe consequences:
- It would make every online communication vulnerable to malicious attackers.
- It would deny citizens as well as professionals of the media, of the legal sector, of the healthcare sector, and of the financial sector to communicate securely online.
- It would open the door for state-sponsored snooping on every citizen, which is a first step to destroy democracy and build an autocratic state.
That's why we call on politicians not to undermine strong encryption. All of us - citizens and companies - depend on encryption to securely use the web.
If you have further questions, please contact Hanna Bozakov on +49 511 202801-15
Tutao GmbH
Deisterstr. 17a
30449 Hannover
Germany
Phone: +49 511 202801-0
Fax: +49 511 202801-19
https://tutanota.com
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Privacy Advocate
Miguel Cuneta
Decentralize.today
