Knock, Knock. Who’s there? The Clipper Chip and Four Horsemen.

Angela Merkel made an omi­nous announce­ment last week. She wants to move ahead with walling off the EU’s web traf­fic and begin a “mas­sive” counter-espi­onage cam­paign against the US and its Five Eyes part­ners. Brazil is mov­ing ahead with its plans to remake the inter­net, includ­ing local data stor­age require­ments and state-encrypt­ed web ser­vices sim­i­lar to Ger­many’s new anti-NSA state-backed email ser­vices. So domes­tic spy­ing could be on the rise, the inter­net itself is at risk, and state-encryp­tion ser­vices are now being offered as an anti-NSA panacea. Main­streamed unbreak­able encryp­tion is also com­ing with­out a debate. An old ene­my of pri­va­cy, the Clip­per Chip, has returned in a new form. And its own arch-neme­ses, the Four Horse­men of the Infopoca­lypse, are back too. And there are no obvi­ous ways to unin­vite these guests with­out a long talk