Help brainstorming for a paper on government and encryption?

[Sanders0492]

First things first - I'm not asking anyone to help me with writing the paper or anything - I take cheating seriously and don't want to cross any lines. I am however a few pages shy of a good paper and would appreciate some help brainstorming. If this thread seems to be borderline cheating, please say so and I'll take it down.

I'm writing a paper for class, and, without thinking, I chose "Should governments have a 'backdoor' to encrypted data?" as my topic. The short answer is "no," and the long answer is "uhh, it could help, but no." So I'm having trouble putting together a substantial paper.

So far I'm including:
- recent FBI vs Apple stuff
- skimming the surface of how encryption works
- how a "backdoor" would weaken encryption schemes
- a citizen's right to reasonable privacy
- comparing encryption to a lockbox (which law enforcement can get a warrant to search, either using a key or breaking into it)
- legislation on general search warrants and also cyber/digital search warrants
- objectively arguing both sides of the debate to come to a conclusion.

It looks like I'll come to 3-4 pages, but I'm really aiming for a solid 6-7 with very little "fluf".

Does anyone have any good ideas of topics/cases/laws to include? Again, I'm not looking for help in a cheating sense! - just help brainstorming.

Thanks for any help!
-Sanders

 

[USAFRet]

- Once an entity (especially 'the government') gets an inroad into something, they will not give it up easily.
- Whatever powers you give to the government you like today, the next government inherits that and will take it a step farther. And you may not like that new government.

 

[Sanders0492]

- Once an entity (especially 'the government') gets an inroad into something, they will not give it up easily.
- Whatever powers you give to the government you like today, the next government inherits that and will take it a step farther. And you may not like that new government.

I'm diggin it, thanks! That's a good point that rashly giving powers, because of an immediate problem, may have undesirable consequences in our rapidly-growing digital world - especially since our government regularly grows and changes. That's a great perspective to include!