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91 Percent of Americans Would Be OK with a Backdoor in Their Software

63% of Americans are in favor of backdoors as part of the government's response to a national security threat

Sep 12, 2015 02:48 GMT  ·  By
91% of Americans who recognized that there were risks to encryption backdoors felt that it was also justified in some circumstances
   91% of Americans who recognized that there were risks to encryption backdoors felt that it was also justified in some circumstances

A recent survey reveals that Americans are quite OK with the idea of adding backdoors in their software, even if in many other surveys in the past they seemed to value their privacy a little bit more.

The survey, conducted by Vormetric and Wakefield, has become more interesting after, in recent days, Apple and the US government have been butting heads in a public debate over encryption and the user's right to privacy.

With more and more tech companies opting to encrypt their data just to be sure law enforcement agencies stop spying on their users, the US government seems to have started to play dirty.

After Apple refused to turn over encrypted text messages arguing it cannot decrypt them, the Justice Department and the FBI are currently preparing to take the company to court and force it to drop its encryption or add a backdoor to its applications.

Most security experts disagree with this approach and claim that a backdoor implemented into any software could be used by malicious actors as well, not just by government officials.

Americans are OK with backdoors, but still fear their own government

Asking regular Americans across the country what their opinion on this topic was, Vormetric found out that 91% of all respondents feel that, despite the dangers to adding backdoors to encryption, the risk is justified.

Survey takers aren't blind to this approach's dangers, and 69% of them feel that data accessed through a backdoor could easily be abused by hackers. The percentage is higher than those who fear the government will be willing to abuse a backdoor to their private information, which is 62%.

If government officials would be able to get a backdoor in encrypted communications, 63% of respondents agree this should be done only in response to a national security threat, 39% only as part of a federal investigation, and only 29% would agree to it as part of a state or local investigation.

On the same topic, 34% of all Americans also fear that by adding backdoors, small businesses will suffer data breaches and eventually lose their competitive edge to other companies.