Building trust is important for ensuring people everywhere can use technology with confidence. In a society where more and more personal and sensitive data is stored and share across digital networks, security and privacy are of utmost importance. People need to depend on the confidentiality and authenticity of electronic information and need to trust that their private communications are not intercepted or altered as they travel across digital networks. In this respect encryption is a critical, and currently the only reliable, way of securing the confidentiality of electronic information. Encryption is the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption is now vital to wide variety of people. Used legitimately, encryption can help citizens and businesses defend themselves against fraud, electronic vandalism and the improper disclosure of confidential information. Unfortunately, encryption may also be used for illegitimate purposes.

Law enforcement agencies and governments call for restrictions on its use and development. Privacy advocates and business interest groups arguing that any attempts to limit encryption would compromise the privacy and compromise the development of electronic commerce.

Arguments for restrictions:

1. Terrorism and violence must be controlled
2. Criminals and terrorists will plot their schemes free from interception using encrypted communications
3. If encryption is used by the wrong people, then law enforcement officials will be powerless to stop those people from committing crimes; even if law enforcement officials intercept the communication made between criminals, they will be unable to decipher the encrypted message
4. There are Important law enforcement and national security reasons that require constraints on this technology

Arguments against restrictions:

1. The threat of increased terrorist or criminal activity can not be used as justification for privacy invasion proposed by some governments
2. As an encryption is the only way to protect the privacy of digitally stored  information any restriction on use, or demands for access, run directly counter to the basic human right to privacy; encryption is the vital privacy-preserving technology that is uniquely suited to protect against bulk surveillance
3. If people cannot rely on the confidentiality of their electronic communications they may reject online systems; the full potential of electronic commerce may never be reached
4. Encryption helps prevent the piracy of intellectual property and the interception of sensitive information such as credit card and pin numbers, health records and personal communications

References:

1. Use Who Holds the Key? - A Comparative Study of US and European Encryption Policies by Sarah Andrews, Policy Analyst, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Washington, DC, USA retrieved from: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2000_2/andrews/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption

3. Testimony Before The Judiciary Committee Concerning The Need For Strong, Legal Computer Encryption by Melinda Brown, retrieved from: http://gos.sbc.edu/b/mbrown.html

4. Encryption Policy Debate retrieved from:http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/encryption-policy-debate

5. https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Encryption%20Description.html

6. Schneier on Security. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2015, retrieved from https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/why_we_encrypt.html