The White House is seeking new legislation to allow law-enforcement agents to enter the back door of anyone's computer without the owner being aware. But even if the key to encrypted text is not stored with a third party, the government wants access. This strikes at the heart of the Bill of Rights. Submarine pods, attached to undersea cable by induction coils, monitor the Internet and cable traffic. Encryption as Protected Art . . . .
Encryption is an essential part of the right to human expression protected under the Constitution.
Ironically, the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the lead agencies attempting to limit the use of encryption, is the home of a well-known artwork, Kryptos, the work of Washington sculptor James Sanborn. The giant bronze piece has stood like an upended parchment in a secret courtyard of the agency since the 1980s, covered with 865 characters arranged in rows. But the best cryptographers at CIA have not yet cracked the code completely, though the message is slowly yielding to efforts of top code breakers.