BU cryptography research cited in The Hill, other outlets on privacy vs. security debate

A BU researcher has designed a prototype system that would enable limited government access to encrypted devices, adding to a small list of options that would enable law enforcement to investigate and prevent crime while also protecting the free speech and civil rights of the public.

In research published in April, Mayank Varia, research associate professor in computer science at BU, and colleague Charles V. Wright of Portland State University proposed two encryption constructions that would make it “possible—though arbitrarily expensive—to recover the plain text of targeted encrypted messages.”

Collectively, these methods would impose significant upfront and marginal costs—in the range of thousands to millions of dollars—to make decrypting even a single file out of reach to non-government attackers. These costs would also be substantial enough to limit misuse by law enforcement agencies; police would not only have to carefully choose their targets, they would also find it difficult to conceal the costs associated with monitoring a user for any length of time.

According to a recent article in The Hill, Varia’s findings may be gaining traction among government officials seeking to find a workable compromise between the sometimes competing interests of privacy and security. The research has also been featured on ZDNet, Dark Reading, The CyberWire, and Security Now.