Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'
I approve of constitutionally guaranteeing that people can keep their communications secure, but as an American, I think the rhetorical framework surrounding the movement could be improved. We need negative rights, not positive ones.<p>People don&#x27;t have a right <i>to</i> encryption, or a right <i>to</i> a specific computing environment, or really, a right <i>to</i> anything at all. What people do have is a right to be free of government limitations on the freedom of individuals to run whatever software they want on devices they own.<p>When you make something a positive right, that means it&#x27;s something the government has to give you, and a government that can give you rights can take them away.<p>The American perspective is that people have rights just by virtue of existing, and the state can only illegally and immorality interfere with rights that you always possess, unconditionally, no matter what.<p>IMHO, the right framing isn&#x27;t that people have a right to encryption, but that the state has no business interfering with the math people do on their own computers.