Should the government should be able to access encrypted communications? Yes, say a small majority of Americans

Gap appears to be narrowing in favour of encryption

The government should be able to access encrypted communications when investigating crimes, say a small majority of US citizens polled in the latest Pew Research Center survey report Americans and Cybersecurity.

However, the gap between those who think law enforcement agencies should have a backdoor into encrypted messages (46 per cent) and those who do not is small. Currently 44 per cent say that "technology companies should be able to use encryption technology that is unbreakable, even to law enforcement."

The survey was conducted between March and May, 2016, among a national sample of 1,040 adults. However, a previous survey conducted in February 2016, at the time when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was seeking to force Apple to decrypt the iPhone of a terrorist suspect, found that 51 per cent were in favour of the DoJ's stand with 38 per cent standing with Apple. While a like-for-like comparison between the two studies is not possible, it may be that attitudes towards encryption are moving away from mandatory backdoors in software.

Other evidence that points in this direction are the age profiles of the respondents, with younger people less likely to favour backdoors, and a loss of faith in institutions to look after data.

The survey found that many people do not trust corporations, social media sites and government agencies to safeguard their data, feeling they have lost control of their personal information on the internet and beyond. Indeed, a significant minority expressed no confidence at all in the ability of these entities to protect their personal data.

These are factors that will tend to be favourable to strong encryption. The actions of the Trump administration may also serve to tip the balance in this direction. In addition, with many more applications now offering end-to-end encryption and with encryption algorithms in the public domain, it may be hard for the authorities to do much about it.

Paradoxically, in spite of their worries, people's internet security habits remain lax. The Pew study found that despite two-thirds experiencing some form of data theft, very few use password managers, 39 per cent deploy the same password across many sites, and half use public WiFi to access online banking or e-commerce sites.