Enabling Encryption in a Surveillance State: The Potential Use and Impact of Anamorphic Encryption to Provide Secure Communication in Digitally Repressive States

Masters Thesis Abstract:

The freedom to send and receive private messages is restricted in modern digital authoritarian regimes. In these cases, dictators may force citizens to disclose their secret keys, giving the government full visibility of all communications. Here we aim to investigate the potential legal and political impacts of deploying Anamorphic Encryption, a technique that embeds a hidden communication channel into existing public-key ciphertexts, in a surveillance State. To do this we bridge the gap between theoretical anamorphic cryptography and the legal, and political realities of deployment under a digitally repressive regime. We discuss the relevant cryptographic foundations, provide a detailed account of anamorphic encryption including various criticisms, improvements, countermeasures, and variations, and conduct analyses that evaluate the legal and political implications. We conclude that while global success of anamorphic encryption is constrained by the legal, political, and economic variables present in any given region or regime type, it remains a viable privacy-preserving tool.