On March 11, President Barack Obama said that smartphones can’t be allowed to be “black boxes,” inaccessible to the government. It is apparent that the government does not understand the evolution of encryption.
The computing and telecom revolution has been marked by a shift from centrally controlled communication and computing managed by large companies to distributed communication and computing managed by businesses and organizations. However, encryption has lagged behind. Large-scale encryption is still centrally managed. Cryptographic locks and keys are issued and managed by huge third party hardware, software, and service providers like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Verizon.
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