The prime minister says the security services must be able to read all our communications in order to keep us safe. In practical terms that can only mean banning encryption or rendering it ineffective. Does he know what that would mean and how it would affect our lives? Let’s set aside the technical absurdity of the idea and consider some of the impacts of such a policy, were it ever to be implemented.
The first and most immediately noticeable change would be that all overseas companies would close their UK-facing services as soon as the law was enacted. Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, WhatsApp, Netflix, Spotify, Evernote, Yahoo, Apple, Dropbox, Google and every other online service provider would cease to operate in the UK because operating insecurely would expose them to massive and continuous attacks. Online banking, e-commerce and Internet communications would end overnight. Internet companies wouldn't be able to deliver services to their customers and would fail or move their operations overseas. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost and much of modern life would become unbearable. The government's recent push to provide services and prove identity securely online? Pointless.
If only the Government can use encryption then all non-governmental agencies must communicate only in plain text. This would be very, very bad indeed; let me give you some idea of just how nasty things would get.
Want to travel? You'll have to buy tickets in person, with cash. Credit card transactions can no longer be verified automatically so every purchase you make must be handled by a person who then manually telephones a call centre to confirm the payment, except the call centres and credit card companies have been hacked and there’s no way for them to actually confirm payment. No more Chip and Pin or Cashless payments, it will be ten pound notes all the way. Do you fancy buying a flight to New York in cash in person at the airport because the booking and reservation system is paper-based? Neither do I.
And when I say “ten pound notes” I’m being optimistic because the financial crash caused by the overnight failure and closure of so many businesses has destroyed the economy and hyperinflation has rendered our currency worthless. The national debt has been inflated out of existence but you won't be able to afford bread.
Even if you could buy tickets you won’t be able to find out when the trains run or the aircraft fly because the databases have been hacked and destroyed. You might be able to get one of the very limited supply of maps and timetables that have been printed on bleached tree flesh but only if the printers have recovered from the shock of losing all their digital printers and computers. And you probably won’t be able to get maps or books or newspapers or magazines from a supermarket because the distribution systems have been hacked and mangled so the supermarkets aren’t able to buy or manage their stock. That's not too serious, though, because your bank account has already been emptied by criminals and the ATM network is no longer working so you can’t get hold of cash anyway.
In fact, you’ll have to make sure you get paid in cash, if you still have a job, but you'll have to spend it very quickly before hyperinflation destroys its value. Bank transfers, direct debits, standing orders and other instruments of financial convenience can no longer be used because unsecured financial transactions through unsecured banks - the only type now allowed - are routinely intercepted and diverted. You won’t be able to pay your mortgage or your gas bill but that’s OK because both the banks and the gas company are struggling, and failing, with the new manual systems that produce their bills and process their incoming payments; they’re going bust, slowly but surely, under a mountain of paper.
Do you still have a job? Probably not, although maybe you’ll get lucky and find work clearing cheques and updating paper account ledgers for a bank. Financial services, film production, software development, industrial design, manufacturing - any industry that deals with data or that can work internationally will move overseas. The economic collapse that follows will destroy most of the remaining companies that employ more than a handful of people. Any business that sells long distance, by which I mean more than a day’s walk, will probably fail.
The supermarkets’ problems aren’t limited to printed materials. You'll have to buy food, clothes and household items from local markets or corner shops because today's sophisticated "just-in-time" supply chains simply can't work without fast, secure communications. The supermarkets might still be open but they won't have much stock because it will all be locally produced - there will be no more cheap clothes from Indonesia or DVD players from China when UK companies can’t interact with overseas banking systems, which are, of course, still encrypted. Oh, and you won't be able to drive to the shops because you won't be able to afford the astronomical cost of petrol; you've got a bike, right? You won't be able to go to gigs or major sporting events because you won't be able to buy tickets or find out what's going on but that won't matter because nobody will come to the UK to perform anyway.
What if you need healthcare, insurance, references for a mortgage, banking services, social services? You're out of luck; the banks and hospitals no longer have your details because your unencrypted records have been stolen or corrupted or deleted by criminals, who are selling your data to other criminals. You won't be able to verify your identity or access any online records of any sort because unencrypted communications have allowed criminals and hostile governments free access to databases that ought to have been secure.
You can't fly anywhere; even if you could buy tickets, air travel is no longer affordable except for the super-rich and most airlines have stopped flying to the UK because it simply isn’t safe for their staff to be here. Heathrow Airport has become the UK’s largest camp for the new homeless, and there are millions of them. Nobody travels to the UK anymore because it’s just so unutterably unpleasant once you arrive. Your only option is to join the long line of people walking to the coast hoping for a ferry to sanity.
Even the criminals don't benefit in the long-term because nobody will have anything left worth stealing. And the terrorists? You guessed it - still active because the security services don’t quite have all the tools they need to keep us safe. And now there is a whole new underclass or unemployed homeless people upon which to prey and from which to recruit; terrorism and revolt become the major growth industries in the UK.
What the prime minister proposes when he says "ban encryption" is nothing less than the destruction of the Internet in all practical terms in the UK and an end to our way of life. And we can’t just return to some idyllic pre-Internet age, even if one had existed, because all the systems and jobs and companies that supported that way of life have gone, swallowed by the vastly better and more efficient digital age.
Without encryption people will suffer and die in numbers that today's terrorists can only dream of. I suspect the prime minister may need to reconsider his proposal.
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