Abstract

This article presents some results of a research conducted from 2016 to 2018 as part of the Nextleap project, which resulted in the publication of the volume Concealing for Freedom: The Making of Encryption, Secure Messaging and Digital Liberties in April 2022. The article makes an argument for studying the experience of encryption in the variety of secure messaging protocols and tools existing today, so as to explore the implications of these socio-technical projects for the «construction» of civil liberties on the Internet. In particular, the article invites to reflect on the importance of analyzing encryption with social science tools. Specifically, it invites to examine how different encrypted messaging solutions are created, developed, implemented and governed and what these different encryption experiences – among the challenges of technical development and those deriving from regulation attempts – mean for digital freedoms