State v. Levie
The main purpose of encryption is to change any data to a humanly unreadable form. Nowadays, encryption is seen as one of the key solutions to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of information. 
Companies and governmental entities have been spending time and money implementing ways to fight cybercrime and increase awareness between internet users and general public with the purpose to reduce the occurrence of crimes such as Identity theft. 
Mainly, one can say that encryption is about privacy. The right to a "safety zone" and privacy exists in the First and Fourth Amendment rights in the USA where a remarkable and recent privacy-based law has been approved, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. In Europe the Lisbon Treaty describes the protection of fundamental data as fundamental human right. 
While achieving privacy through the use of encryption seems to provide everyone with answers to decrease the disclosure of personal information, it benefits the possibility to conceal from authorities acts of terrorism, child pornography and others.
The use of encryption tools is becoming more and more disseminated; states are starting to make a crime "to use encryption". States like Illinois in USA are creating specific laws to handle this matter : "A person shall not knowingly use or attempt to use encryption, directly or indirectly, to:
Human rights and encryption
There are a number of limitations on the free deployment of encryption by electronic communications services despite the fact that Indian law and policy promotes and requires the implementation of strong encryption as a security measure, such as in banking, ecommerce and by organizations handling sensitive personal information. There is notable legal uncertainty about the precise legal scope of these license requirements and to what extent they could have legal effect on (the use of or deployment of ) services by the end-users of covered services. The encryption debate ignited publicly in India in 2008 after the Government published a draft proposal with a number of envisioned limitations on the use of encryption. The policy, issued under Section 84A of the Indian Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 was short-lived, but worries remain about the lack of safeguards for privacy and freedom of expression that the draft illustrated. In response to the outcry, the Indian government first exempted ""mass use encryption products, which are currently being used in web applications, social media sites, and social media applications such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter etc."" Soon thereafter, it withdrew the proposed policy and a new policy has not been made public yet.