The Bodleian Digital Comms team is no stranger to developing out of the ordinary content. Want to represent all of the varied and gruesome deaths in Shakespeare in a fun and
engaging way? We’re on it!
We manage almost all of the Libraries’ public facing digital ‘stuff’, from our main websites to social media and digital signage. When we tot it all up, it’s over fifty websites, a
similar number of blogs, the full range of social media platforms, more than twenty digital screens, a handful of interactive experiences a year, plus…well, not actually a partridge
in a pear tree, but there areunicorns in arks.
From ambush to war crimes, a chance to delve into death in Shakespeare’s works, and to think about how it differed from
the reality
Whatever the platform, our team’s focus is on finding ways to engage the Libraries’ audiences — whether students, researchers, tourists or those around the globe who can’t actually
visit in person — with our work and our collections.
From a G7 meeting of interior ministers in Paris this month, an “outcome document“:
Encourage Internet companies to establish lawful access solutions for their products and services, including data that is encrypted, for law enforcement and competent authorities
to access digital evidence, when it is removed or hosted on IT servers located abroad or encrypted, without imposing any particular technology and while ensuring that assistance
requested from internet companies is underpinned by the rule law and due process protection. Some G7 countries highlight the importance of not prohibiting, limiting, or weakening
encryption;
There is a weird belief amongst policy makers that hacking an encryption system’s key management system is fundamentally different than hacking the system’s encryption algorithm.
The difference is only technical; the effect is the same. Both are ways of weakening encryption.
The G7’s proposal to encourage encryption backdoors demonstrates two unsurprising things about the politicians in attendance, including that:
They’re unwilling to attempt to force Internet companies to add backdoors (e.g. via legislation, fines, etc.), making their resolution functionally toothless, and
More-importantly: they continue to fail to understand what encryption is and how it works.
Somehow, then, this outcome document simultaneously manages to both go too-far (for a safe and secure cryptographic landscape for everyday users) and not-far-enough (for law enforcement
agencies that are in favour of backdoors, despite their huge flaws, to actually gain any benefit). Worst of both worlds, then.
Needless to say, I favour not attempting to weaken encryption, because such measures (a) don’t work against foreign powers, terrorist groups, and hardened criminals and (b)
do weaken the personal security of law-abiding citizens and companies (who can then become victims of the former group). “Backdoors”, however phrased, are a terrible idea.
