Encryption: How much do we need?

To the Editor: 
The fight between Apple and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has fallen out of the news cycle now, but this case goes far beyond the immediate squabble over whether or not Apple should be forced to write a program that would create a “backdoor” into their flagship product, the iPhone, to allow FBI to access the phone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters last year. At first glance, it seems entirely reasonable that Apple should assist FBI in this endeavor. After all, they only want to open one phone, one time, and what could possibly be wrong about that? What is wrong is that this issue has never been about a single phone and a single individual. Standing in line behind FBI is the District Attorney (DA) of New York County who has an additional 175 phones taken from suspects in street crime investigations, not terrorism suspects, just your average, accused criminal. Who can say there won’t be dozens, hundreds or thousands more demands for information on these smart phones from DAs all across the nation. It was only a few short years ago that the revelations of Edward Snowden brought forth the anger and indignation of patriotic Americans and led directly to Apple and Google rewriting software that our phones and tablets use to improve the security of our financial records, love letters we’ve written or the guilty pleasures everyone enjoys in secret.
Terrorists are not the only threat ready to do us harm. There are millions of bad actors, con men and identity thieves constantly on the lookout for vulnerabilities, weaknesses and opportunities to get our private information and use it against us. While terrorism is one of the greatest evils we face on a daily basis, scammers, etc., bring about thousands or even millions more attacks against our security and privacy than terrorists ever will. The only thing that stands between us having our bank accounts emptied and our secrets exposed to the world is encryption.
What would happen if the government was successful in forcing Apple to break its brand of encryption? First off, using the Apple precedent, the government would seek to force makers of Android-based products to break their encryption schemes. Next in line would be companies who write encryption software and demand they provide a backdoor into their products. That would be a glorious day when the government gains access to all the encrypted products produced by U.S. companies. Terrorists of the world, along with the American citizenry, would be unable to communicate securely to further their nefarious plans. Hooray! The only problem would be all the other companies around the world who also create encryption products but are not subject to U.S. law. Terrorists, as well as all Americans who want to be able to encrypt their devices and their communications, would flock to non-U.S. companies who can, with complete disregard for what the U.S. government wants to achieve, write new and better encryption than any American company could and the U.S. government will be powerless to intercept, decode and prevent the next attack, the one after that, and so on. Meanwhile, American citizens would be more vulnerable and unable to defend ourselves against identity thieves. Unless of course, we were to avail ourselves to the same companies who are not bound by American law. In any case, the government will be in the same boat and we will be much worse off.