The government has been trying to weaken all forces of encryption for ages. There have been rumors that random number generators have been weakened in almost all operating systems available.

There are black sites that intercept packages from major carriers in the US to install custom firmware on network equipment shipped to large organizations and factory re-seal them.

The NSA has also infected hard drive firmware with malware to give them full access regardless of encryption used and persist across hardware wiping.

Governments want full unfettered access to all data regardless of who owns that data. In their perfect world, encryption would be limited to government use only. They will do anything possible to make this happen, regardless of legality. As time goes on, it will just get worse.

This cartoon was created when the FBI was trying to force Apple to allow them past their encryption on their iPhone devices. Any access granted to the NSA is also granted to anyone with the know how to access it. What the NSA has access to is not limited to the NSA, there have been multiple instances where NSA tools have been leaked.

If this happens while there are backdoors in encryption, nothing will be safe. Your Facebook account, Steem wallet, even bank accounts will be easy pickings for anyone with access to the tools and know how.

In a recent meeting between Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand it was argued that governments need to force backdoors in all known encryption methods. This is for the safety of you and me to prevent terrorism and crime.

"Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions," the Five-Eyes joint statement on encryption said.

Encryption with a backdoor is not encryption, in fact, it is no better than your front door in your house. We all know if someone wants to get into your house, no lock on your front door will stop them. It's far easier to just kick through a window if they want to get in, they will. As they say, "locks are to keep your friends out".

Backdoors in encryption will undermine the very purpose of encryption and will create a state of chaos. No one will be able to trust anything to be safe, not just from the government, but from hackers and criminals.

I can't imagine a world where encryption is no longer trustable. Every bank account could be compromised in an instant, possibly at once. A third party government could crimple another country by compromising the resources of their citizens.

At this point, I don't know of anything that can be done to stop this erosion of privacy and ultimately security. I fear for our future and more importantly my son's. If it wasn't for Edward Snowden, this may have happened without anyone actually knowing or even caring (due to lack of understanding).

Sadly, I'm not optimistic.