Societal Foundations of Cryptography

Contributor(s)

Martin R. Albrecht and Rikke Bjerg Jensen

Abstract

"Encryption is deeply threatening to power" (Whittaker, 2024) and "Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what" (Rogaway, 2015). These are two examples of a broader, and widely accepted, idea in the field of cryptography: that cryptography is in conflict with power. This assumes that cryptography is, or at least can be, a technology that limits power; a tool in the toolbox of resistance against overreach by an authority. We will explain that this is an incorrect characterisation of cryptography. Rather, cryptography fundamentally relies on and presumes power. We show how this premise of power is built into fundamental definitions of the field, not just in its practice. Put succinctly: to speak of cryptographic security notions means to speak of power and indeed violence in an immediate, non-metaphorical sense. This does not mean cryptography is wrong: its assumptions about power hold but they mark cryptography as belonging to a particular kind of society.