In 2025, the global damage cost resulting from cybercrime was an estimated $10.5 trillion USD, up from just $3 trillion annually a decade earlier.
This growth in illicit activity has pushed encryption to the center of debates about national security, law enforcement and civil liberties. Designed to protect assets and safeguard privacy, it can paradoxically be used by criminals and terrorists to conceal their activities as well. This ambiguity raises profound ethical questions about the limits of encryption access.
At the core of it, we must ask: “When public safety is at stake, should law enforcement be given privileged access to private data? Or is that a slippery slope toward authoritarianism?”
Srinivas Shekar, a Forbes Contributor and CEO at Pantherun Technologies, takes a deep dive into criminal encryption and civil liberties in an article that says security and privacy make unnatural bedfellows.
Encryption allows complex societies to function. It plays a critical role in protecting the systems we depend on daily, from financial transactions and patient records to public power grids, transportation networks and military command-and-control systems. Without encryption, it would be impossible for billions of people on Earth to communicate and transact securely and freely.
But encryption can also help bad actors. Cybercriminals and terrorist networks use encryption to communicate their plans securely, avoid detection and even to execute their crimes—stealing and encrypting data in ransomware attacks, for instance.
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